


All the Useless Things -- Wilgefortis, year 2

by tin_girl



Series: All The Useless Things [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Art Theft, Boarding School, Bullying, Coming of Age, Dark Academia, F/F, F/M, Here we go, M/M, Pre-Slash, Puberty, Romance, Shakespeare, Slow Burn, Theatre, Twelfth Night - Freeform, elitism, i am so not copying all the tags from part 1, isn't that what they said about stranger things..., ok not really i lied, possibly already underage drinking which i do not condone, seducing people as revenge, so much shakespeare fangirling beware, still very much, thank god that is an actual tag, the real villain of the story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:07:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 65,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24875905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tin_girl/pseuds/tin_girl
Summary: Wolves aren’t as solitary as people think, The Book says. (The Book is an outdated encyclopaedia we share between us at the orphanage, twice as heavy as it was five years ago for all the duct tape.) A common misconception, It says. In fact, a ‘lone wolf’ is simply a wolf that is looking for another. How Very Romantic, Not.Still, a love story in three paintings.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Series: All The Useless Things [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1790320
Comments: 198
Kudos: 51





	1. the study of wolves, september 1999

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again! Bless you if you got here, oh readers! Bless you for reading this in spite of all the weirdness (still can't believe I named a British boarding school after Uncumber/Kümmernis/Frasobliwa/Wilgefortis) and all the plot holes (like how there haven't been any orphanages in England for quite a while now and this story only has them because I read A Little Princess in my childhood one time too many) and all the excruciating slow burn (no, they don't get together in this one, either). 
> 
> This chapter introduces a new character even though at some point I believe I said that there wouldn't be any new crucial characters during the school years. So I lied. Nobody's surprised. The whole chapter is also much more fragmentary than I wanted but I did try to include many things in it because, well, new school year and all that. As for this whole part of the story -- it will most definitely be shorter than part 1, The Angst is still a long ways away, it will include kids doing very, very stupid things because Peer Pressure and Shakespeare! 
> 
> Please let me know what you think? <3

Ida Rentoul Outhwaite, _Catching the Moon on a rope of dewdrops_

*

From far off white loneliness settles upon the white page. I am convinced it is an act against white loneliness to say so.

~Michael Burkard, _The Man I Heard Of_

*

His parents are meeting someone ‘awfully important’ for cake and so Aubrey takes a train to London alone and then hangs around the station for two hours, half-heartedly reading through his copy of _Prometheus Bound._ At some point, he moves to the platform where the train headed in Wilgefortis’s direction will be stopping in half an hour, some kids already there, complaining at their parents’ fussing, and searches his pockets for something he could use as a bookmark. He hates dog-earing pages and, in the end, he memorizes the number and closes the book without marking it.

Quickly is the first familiar face in the crowd, alone and hauling twice as much luggage as he had last year, newsboy cap rumpled but there.

“Morning,” he greets Aubrey distractedly, even though it isn’t anymore. “How was your summer without Easy?”

Aubrey stares at him, confused. The skin on his nose is red and peeling, even though Quickly seems like the last person who’d let himself get sun-burnt, and August wasn’t even that warm.

“Without Easy? It was without _all_ of you,” Aubrey says, self-consciously tugging at his Outhwaite tie. He remembers the last time he talked to Easy, no wolves in England and Louis Someone, Easy’s friend. 

Quickly considers him with his head tilted to the side, and then frowns, troubled.

“Well, yes, but the two of you are so _close_.”

Aubrey struggles for words. Usually, Easy is too busy fighting with Jerusalem, digging his chin into Regina’s shoulder, or bothering Quickly himself to pay him any mind.

“ _Are_ we?”

Quickly blinks, surprised, and then his frown deepens.

“Oh, maybe you’re right,” he says, slow. “I don’t know. It feels like you are, though now that I think about it… Maybe because you’re both so obsessed with art and all that.”

“Are you not?” Aubrey asks and then clarifies when Quickly gives him a confused look. “Obsessed with art?”

“God, no!” Quickly says right away, then laughs, self-conscious. “I do think some paintings are pretty but… I don’t know. It’s just not— You know that Dutch painting with all those men huddled around that corpse with his arm all cut open? I know the man is dead but I always want to shake them all and get them to patch him up instead of gawking anyway.”

 _The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp_ , which never fails to make Aubrey anxiously rub his own arm. He remembers Quickly cleaning Easy’s wounded foot with steady hands and doesn’t tell him that he’d make a good doctor because he suspects Quickly isn’t ready to hear it just yet.

He opens his mouth to ask Quickly about his own summer when Kipp, who’s also taking the train this year, leaps between them, slinging an arm across Aubrey’s shoulders and kissing him loudly on the cheek, more sound than contact.

“Lo, boys!” he says in a ridiculous accent that Aubrey can’t quite identify. “Aubrey, friend, how was summer sans Easy, hmmm?”

Aubrey sighs.

*

By the time the train comes to a stop, they still haven’t spotted either of the girls or Easy, and Aubrey keeps craning his neck and looking but Kipp tugs on his sleeve to get him to move. Aubrey hauls his own and Quickly’s luggage, trying to ignore the mass of kids crowded around the entrance, pressing on them from every side, and waits his turn, sweat gluing his collar to his skin and no mother to adjust it for him.

Once they find a compartment, Kipp sprawls across all the seats on one side so no one will take them and commands Quickly to watch for the others through the window that looks like it hasn’t been washed in forever.

“There you are!” Jerusalem says, bursting into the compartment and dragging Regina inside by the wrist. Aubrey turns to smile at them and notes that Jerusalem’s hair is even longer than last year, a mess of curls you could lose something in. She’s sporting an uneven tan and has twice as many freckles as she did in June, smiling and sun-kissed.

“Hello,” Aubrey says and smiles at Regina, who looks exactly as she did last time he saw her, over Jerusalem’s shoulder.

“AA,” Jerusalem says, curious. “What’s that on your face?”

“These are glasses,” Aubrey says, tapping the frames with his finger. “First designed most likely in Pisa near the end of the 13th—”

“I know they’re glasses!” Jerusalem interrupts, impatient, reaching for them with her hand. Aubrey steps back just in time.

“I know that you know that,” he says with a sheepish smile, and rubs the back of his neck. “Apparently, I’m short-sighted.”

“It’s from all that reading you do,” Jerusalem decides. “It’s bad for your health.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“Actually—” Quickly starts but gets immediately silenced, smothered in Jerusalem’s hug.

“I think,” Regina says, stuffing her bag over the seats without anybody’s help, “this is going to be a long year.”

“Easy,” Kipp says because Aubrey hasn’t yet. “Has anyone seen Easy?”

“Maybe they expelled him for being a nuisance,” Jerusalem says with a shrug and then sprawls herself on top of Kipp, ignoring his squeak of protest. 

“Then they’d have expelled you, too,” Quickly mumbles and Jerusalem tries to kick him but only ends up losing her shoe.

“You’re all so ungrateful!” she whines, rearranging her arms on Kipp’s chest. “I’m your only chance at a social life, you know.”

Kipp spits out her newsboy cap and tries to shove her off him, to no avail.

“I have social life, thank you very much,” he protests and then shoves so hard that they both end up tumbling to the floor.

“Jesus Christ,” Easy says from the entrance to the compartment, frowning at Jerusalem, and he’s just like he was in June, too, uncombed hair, holey jumper, and that signature scowl of his. “I can see your underwear, you bat-pee-drinker.”

“Easy!” Jerusalem squeals, delighted. “Why, I wore the skirt just for you!”

“What do you mean, for me? Is it a gift? Why put it on, then? And I don’t wear skirts anyway.”

“You know,” Jerusalem says, getting to her feet. “Sometimes it’s hard to tell if you mean even half of the ridiculous things that come out of your pretty, pretty mouth.”

“Likewise,” Easy grumbles. “And my mouth is _not_ pretty.”

“Whatever you say, Pollyanna.”

Ten seconds later, both Jerusalem and Easy join Kipp on the floor.

“It’s a good thing I skipped breakfast today,” the latter mumbles. “ _Because I would surely throw it all up_.”

“Ew,” Quickly says. “Would it be egg?”

“How about we all settle down, hmm?” Regina says. “I don’t think anyone cleans these floors, you know.”

“Oh but you’re right,” Quickly whispers, horrified. “There’s no way anyone does!”

“Even though germs here thrive, we shall stay very alive,” Jerusalem recites loudly. “It’s a couplet.”

“CAN YOU MOVE YOUR FINGER FROM MY EAR, PLEASE, THANK YOU!” Easy yells from beneath her, kicking his legs.

“You’re right,” Aubrey tells Regina, inexplicably happy and unable to hold back a smile. “This _is_ going to be a long year.”

*

An hour into the ride, Regina is distracting Quickly from not being able to fall asleep with Aubrey’s crosswords, Kipp is trying to whistle _Ode To My Family_ and failing, Jerusalem is asleep with her legs stretched and propped on the wall, head hanging over the floor and hair half inside her kicked-off shoes (“What if all the blood in her body goes to her brain,” Quickly said with horror one stop ago, “and she _dies_?”), and Aubrey is holding up her skirt, alternating hands every five minutes or so.

Easy has been pinching his wrist the whole ride because both Kipp and Jerusalem have money on when he’s going to “fall asleep on top of Aubrey like he always does.”

 _TWICE!_ He shouted in protest when Kipp said it’d take five stations. _It only happened TWICE!_

“I hate trains,” he says now, the skin of his forearm all red blotches. “I hate _everything_.”

“We know, we know,” Kipp sighs, and then continues whistling something that sounds more like _The Phantom of the Opera_ than The Cranberries.

“And since when do you wear glasses anyway?” Easy complains, glaring at Aubrey.

“Er.”

“They’re _stupid_ ,” Easy says slowly. He sounds unsure.

“Alright.”

“I have your books,” Easy tells him. He keeps pinching himself, and Aubrey wishes he’d stop. “I didn’t manage to send them back.”

He blushes and looks away, and Aubrey guesses he means that he had no money for posting a package that heavy. When Aubrey sent him the books, he got a card back with nothing but “thanks.” written on it. Stupidly, he kept it.

“That’s alright,” he says carefully. “Did you like them?”

Easy frowns.

“Not that Edwin Drood idiocy,” he says. “If Dickens was too stupid to finish it, he shouldn’t have started it.”

Aubrey sputters.

“He _died._ ”

“I would, too,” Easy agrees with a slow nod. “If I wrote something that bad.”

“No, he died _in the middle of writing it_ , Easy, that’s why it’s unfinished.”

Easy nods again.

“ _Exactly_.”

Aubrey presses his hands to his temples and Jerusalem’s skirt slides low, pooling at her stomach. Thankfully, at least she’s wearing tights.

“No, Easy, no, listen—” he starts agitated, only for Easy to snort with laughter. Aubrey stares, confused, and Kipp starts whistling what sounds suspiciously like the _Swan Lake_ theme.

“Jesus, _I know_ ,” Easy says, and then giggles into the crook of his elbow. His cheeks flush red and he looks— happy. “God, your _face_!”

“Even Easy isn’t cruel enough to hold somebody’s stroke against them, I don’t think,” Regina says, thoughtful.

“What do you mean, ‘even Easy’?” Easy screeches, all offended.

“Er, people—,” Aubrey starts, then takes a breath. “Many people have added their own endings since. For Edwin Drood.”

Easy looks away from Regina and frowns.

“That’s _awful_ ,” he says, almost disgusted.

“Awful?” Aubrey repeats, confused.

“Well, maybe not awful but…,” Easy says, scratching at his forehead. “What if they all got it wrong? He’s dead and he can’t tell them so and what if they all got it wrong?”

He’s staring at Aubrey with wide eyes, something frantic about the way he keeps pinching himself.

“He’s not here to say they’re wrong and—”

“Alright,” Aubrey says. “But—”

“I’m going!” Easy announces, getting up so fast that he sways in place, and Aubrey keeps himself from reaching out to steady him, and wonders why he’s so upset. “I’m— bathroom!”

He slides the compartment door open, takes a step, and then stops dead in his tracks.

“Oh.”

“Oh?” Kipp says, craning his neck. “ _Oh_.”

Aubrey leans to the right and spots the tiny girl sat cross-legged under the window right outside their compartment, watching them with huge eyes. Her hair is a black cloud around her head, her hands are all sharp knuckles and small fingers, and her tights are ripped at the knees, scabs forming over her skin. She looks eight years old.

“I’m sorry,” she blurts out, staring at Easy with horror. “I didn’t mean to sit here!”

Aubrey can’t see Easy’s face, but he can just imagine the scowl that earns her.

“What, you just fell?” Easy says, and then, “Hey. _Hey_. Are those _dolphins_?”

Kipp almost falls out of his seat craning his neck and Aubrey wonders if he’s trying to see out the window, actually expecting a family of dolphins out there in the meadows.

“Killer whales,” the girl mumbles and then stretches her arm out. It shakes.

When Aubrey squints, he thinks he can see black ink all over her skin, almost too dark to make out the lines made by pen.

“Jesus,” Easy says. “You’re this year’s me, aren’t you?”

Aubrey gets it right away. The girl clearly doesn’t.

“This year’s orphan,” Easy clarifies, displaying a lack of tact that makes even Kipp’s eyes go wide. Jerusalem makes a snoring sound, a reaction in its own right. “No parents, Fairy Godmother December Graham, blah blah blah.”

The girl pulls her sleeve down, over the drawings.

“Wait, I want to see,” Easy says, crouching in front of her and settling down in the entrance, cross-legged, too. Quickly mumbles something about germs and Regina pats him on the shoulder. “Can I see?”

The girl stretches her arm out again. It doesn’t shake this time, not even when Easy dutifully rolls her sleeve up for her.

“So what, they’re dolphins but with teeth?” he asks, turning her arm this way and that.

“Dolphins have teeth,” the girl says. “Who are you?”

“Ezra Weiss,” Easy introduces himself. “You?”

“Bessie Lawrence,” the girl says, then leans close to Easy and lowers her voice. “Is it true that they serve caviar at Wilgefortis?” she asks, horrified, and Aubrey can’t help it – he remembers last year and laughs into his sleeve.

“Did someone say caviar…?” Jerusalem mumbles sleepily and falls off her seat.

“I’m Ezra Weiss,” Easy repeats with a sigh, “and these are my— idiots. Except for Regina. She’s smart.”

Kipp raises his eyebrows at Aubrey, clearly amused, and Aubrey ignores him.

“We’re not that bad,” he tells the girl – Bessie – with his best formal-functions smile. “Would you like to join us inside?”

Bessie ends up squished between him and Easy, nervously telling them that she comes from Derbyshire and answering Easy’s questions about killer whales (“What do they eat? How big are their brains? What about their hearts? _That_ big? I shudder to think what their genitalia must be like, then… Do they have their own languages? Really? They do? Do they ever eat people? How disappointing. What about penguins?”). After a while, it occurs to Aubrey that no one will win any money because with Bessie there Easy won’t be falling asleep on top of him, but with Easy as happy as he seems, fingers constantly on the drawing on Bessie’s forearm even when he’s not staring at it, he’s quite content.

Still, when they leave the train hours later, it’s a bit disappointing, finding his shirt collar dry.

*

At Wilgefortis, he stands in the queue to the phones and doesn’t get to call his mother before lights out.

This time, Treasure Little doesn’t get to call anyone either and they smile at each other over a crowd of other second-years, a silent hello.

*

Apparently, Easy’s been drawing the whole summer, and some of the drawings are gifts. He gives Kipp one first, then Quickly, then Jerusalem, then Regina.

Kipp’s is a caricature of him trying to give five girls at once roses with his five hands, Quickly’s is a newspaper boy, Jerusalem’s is a rooster, for some reason, and Regina’s is a murmuration of birds crowded against a white sky. Aubrey gets to glance at all of them but is too embarrassed to ask to examine them closely and ends up thinking about it a lot in bed instead of sleeping – Easy’s frantic lines, the smudged charcoal, and who knew panic could be that graceful?

He doesn’t expect to get his own drawing but it still comes as a disappointment when he doesn’t, maybe because he learns he isn’t getting one for sure from Lavinia Pye of all people.

Predictably, he bumps into her in the library, and she, too, looks just like last year, only she doesn’t tilt her chin quite as high up.

“ _Princess Bride_?” Aubrey says when he spots her trying to reach a book.

“No,” she mumbles and blushes. “ _A Room with a View_.”

Aubrey takes it off the shelf for her before she can ask, so that she won’t feel obliged to thank him. He doesn’t think her pride would survive it.

“I’m _nothing_ like a peacock,” Lavinia says out of the blue after taking the book from him, strangely vicious.

“Yes?” Aubrey says carefully. Her blush spreads to her ears.

“This, I mean this,” she says, digging a folded square of paper out of her pocket. She hands it to him and Aubrey carefully spreads it out. It’s a drawing of a peacock, some of its feathers fallen loose around it. The style is undeniably Easy, all chaotic lines that seem to writhe, a beehive of a drawing.

Well, if even _Lavinia_ got one.

“It’s beautiful,” Aubrey says quietly.

It’s not Alfie’s shift today. He’s only in the library because he’s been to see Dora Maar. He thinks— he _knows_ that art is not about having, it’s not supposed to be about having, but he wants one anyway, Easy’s drawing all for himself.

“It is, isn’t it?” Lavinia snaps, furious. “It’s _so_ beautiful, and ugh, that little gremlin—”

Aubrey snorts but it’s not laughter, not really. He thinks that maybe if Lavinia really hated the picture, he’d be brave enough to ask her for it, but she clearly doesn’t, so he returns it without a word and leaves, remembers Quickly and Kipp asking him about his ‘summer sans Easy’, thinks, _there._

Later that night, Easy studies with his feet in Aubrey’s lap, the two of them taking up the common room’s couch. Aubrey is supposed to be rereading an essay they were meant to write during the summer but he finds himself watching Easy instead.

Maybe it’s not that Easy doesn’t consider him a friend. Maybe it’s just that Aubrey is too boring to think of anything to draw for him. He stares at Easy’s feet in his lap and tries not to feel too much like a piece of furniture.

“Is this correct?” Easy demands, shoving his notebook in Aubrey’s face.

Well, furniture can’t count, at least.

“Correct,” Aubrey confirms after a minute of Easy poking him in the cheek with the tip of his pen.

“You have ink on your face,” Easy announces, like he’s not the one responsible.

“Really? You don’t say.”

“Don’t move or I’ll kill you,” Easy says, disturbingly serious, and grabs Aubrey by the chin, stretching his cheek with his thumb.

“With a pen?” Aubrey says, voice higher than he’d like.

“With a _knife_.”

“You don’t _have_ a knife.”

“Shut up.”

At first, Aubrey thinks that Easy is writing something on his cheek but he soon realizes that Easy is drawing. He closes his eyes and lets him. Better being a sheet of paper than…

Than nothing?

When he opens his eyes, Bessie Lawrence is standing in front of him, watching him curiously. These past few days, Easy has been seeking her out in the corridors, grumbling about Chagall, pretending to be sulky but never leaving her side before she would stop trembling. Apparently, she’s homesick (“even though where she’s from is hardly a home”), she collects buttons, and her favourite colour is purple.

“A killer whale,” she says now.

“Is it?” Aubrey laughs. “Is it really?”

“You won’t prove it,” Easy hisses, capping his pen and moving away. Suddenly, Aubrey wishes he had a blanket.

“Mirrors,” he mumbles, somewhat sleepily, and closes his notebook. “There are mirrors.”

He wonders, absently, if Bessie got a drawing too. He hopes she did. She’s small and scared and she deserves one.

“No, there aren’t,” Easy says, strangely soft and quiet. He pokes Aubrey’s cheek again, only this time it’s his finger.

“He’s right,” Bessie says, bravely squaring her shoulders. “There _are_ mirrors.”

“Yeah but Aubrey probably doesn’t even know _where_ they are,” Easy points out, kicking his heels up and down on Aubrey’s knees. “He’s too busy being intellectual to remember that he has a body, much less actually look at it.”

“Not fair,” Aubrey says and lets himself close his eyes for a second. Or two. Or three.

Easy stops drumming his heels on his knees and Aubrey sighs.

“Is he asleep?” Bessie says, curious. He almost expects another poke to the cheek.

“No,” says Aubrey.

“Yes,” says Easy. “Help me haul him to bed?”

“I don’t need hauling,” Aubrey insists and gets up to demonstrate but not before gently pushing Easy’s feet off his lap. “See?”

Bessie smiles and Aubrey wants to tell her that Wilgefortis is not as scary as it seems but he’s too sleepy for that sort of a half-truth.

“Goodnight, you two,” he mumbles, gathering his things. Later, he brushes his teeth and stares at the killer whale on his cheek, and decides to wait with washing it off till morning.

*

Regina knits Bessie Lawrence a jumper, Alfie hugs Aubrey on his first shift after the holidays, and one night something makes a rustling sound when Aubrey settles his head on his pillow.

When he reaches beneath it, half expecting an obscure message in red ink from Jerusalem, he pulls out seven, no, eight, no, _nine_ drawings of wolves, the moon an angry circle above each one, like a coin circled too many times.

Aubrey checks that the others are asleep and adjusts his nightlamp, then spreads the drawings on his bed. Some of them are unfinished, and in one the wolf is barely visible under angry lines in pencil running across the whole page. He smiles and tries to guess at the order in which the drawings were made, rearranging them like puzzles.

 _Apparently_ , it says in Easy’s furious handwriting on one page, _wolves are very devoted to their families._

_(Maybe that’s why they’re extinct here, in the country of misery and Victorian orphans.)_

_(I know that’s not why, shut up.)_

Aubrey laughs and reaches for another drawing with writing on it.

_Wolves aren’t as solitary as people think, The Book says. (The Book is an outdated encyclopaedia we share between us at the orphanage, twice as heavy as it was five years ago for all the duct tape.) A common misconception, It says. In fact, a ‘lone wolf’ is simply a wolf that is looking for another. How Very Romantic, Not._

In the last drawing with writing on it, half the words are crossed-out.

 _Last year, I found this story called “The Company of Wolves”_ _in the school library, and it was very gross but ???????????????????????????????????????. It was sort of like “Little Red Riding Hood,” only very uncensored, and it explained how ???????????????????????????????????. There was this absolutely disgusting scene about a girl eating the wolf’s lice but ????????????????????????????????????._

Aubrey stares at the drawings for a long while and then searches for tissue paper to fold between them so they won’t smudge. He suspects that he got nine because Easy was dissatisfied with each one, and wonders how on Earth he’s going to communicate to Easy that they’re all wonderful without acknowledging having gotten them in the first place, since Easy must not want him to, what with sneaking them under Aubrey’s pillow.

“It’s because you care about art,” Kipp tells him the next morning, surprisingly insightful. “Of course he thought nothing would be good enough. You spend all your free time staring at a _Picasso_.”

“Oh,” Aubrey says, stupidly, and then carefully tapes the drawing where it says that wolves aren’t solitary after all to the wall, right above his bed.

Kipp smiles.

*

Bessie Lawrence can’t sleep and so Easy gives her his beloved doll, Georgie the Second.

“Georgie the Second looks like some pagan artifact from a low-budget horror film,” Kipp tells him carefully. “Are you sure it will help her sleep?”

But Bessie kisses Easy on the cheek and takes the doll without a word.

“What about you, anyway?” Aubrey dares ask. “Will _you_ sleep?”

The theft of _Open Sea_ has been kept a secret and the official version is that December sold it on a whim, but that doesn’t change the fact that it was very much stolen and that there’s an empty spot on Easy’s wall where it used to be.

“I’m fine,” Easy says, bored. “I’m thirteen.”

The day before, December Graham came to Wilgefortis smelling of summer and called Aubrey to her office, where she told him that she’d offered Easy to put him in one room with Aubrey, Quickly, and Kipp.

“He said ‘no’,” she said with an apologetic smile, offering him a biscuit. “Apparently, he ‘doesn’t need coddling.’”

“Shame,” said Kipp later, when Aubrey told him about it. “We could play chess together at night, and all that,” he added, even though Aubrey had never seen him play anything besides charades.

“If you’re sure,” Aubrey says now, watching Easy carefully.

“Monet is the author of approximately 2500 artworks,” Easy says. “I think we’ll survive the loss of one.”

He sounds like he’s trying very hard to hide that he doesn’t really mean it.

“HEY, HEY!” Jerusalem shouts just then from the other end of the corridor, running towards them with a sheet of paper in hand. “LOOK!”

She stops two inches from Aubrey, out of breath, and waves the paper frantically. Bessie Lawrence’s eyes widen and she hides behind Easy, who glares at Jerusalem and near bares his teeth.

“If you stop moving, maybe we will,” Kipp says, dry, and then plucks the paper from her hand. “Auditions for _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_. Second and third-years only.”

“Oh,” Aubrey says, intrigued. “Do you want to do Shakespeare, then?”

“This must be the worst poster I’ve ever seen,” Kipp says, turning the paper this way and that. “And _no_. Everyone always makes fun of the theatre people.”

“But just think about it!” Jerusalem says, slinging an arm over his shoulders. “You’ll have to wear tights and then everyone will get to see your shapely legs.”

“You think my legs are shapely?”

“No,” Jerusalem snorts, shoving him away. “Anyway, no need to rush, I’ve already signed us all up for the audition.”

“You what?!”

“ _I’ll put a girdle round about the Earth in forty minutes_!” Jerusalem recites and then skips away.

“To be fair,” Aubrey says, “she _would_ make a great Puck.”

“I have a reputation, you know,” Kipp whines, staring after her. “Woe is me.”

“This really is a terrible poster,” Easy says, taking it from Kipp, and Bessie nods vigorously.

“Oh, I know, I know,” Kipp says, instantly brightening up. “Jerry should be the donkey!”

Aubrey rubs his palm across his face. A long year, indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, so, I hate pulling a JK Rowling but since Aubrey's POV must remain limited, here is Easy's note on The Company of Wolves with the crossed-out parts (feel free to ignore it, because death of the author and all that, but tbh, it is sort of important for his later character development): 
> 
> _Last year, I found this story called “The Company of Wolves” in the school library, and it was very gross but also kind of beautiful. It was sort of like “Little Red Riding Hood,” only very uncensored, and it explained how wolves are lonely even when they murder everyone. Wolves, Werewolves. There was this absolutely disgusting scene about a girl eating the wolf’s lice but I sort of get it. She’s safe, in the end. Something bad came for her and will only lay its head in her lap. “She knew she was nobody’s meat.”_


	2. all the world's a stage, september 1999

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> faeries, cross-dressing, and evil ploys

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for taking so long but I got a bit lost with the plot for a while! However, I have now plotted it all out and have the exact number of chapters for year 2, 3 & 4 together with what will happen in each one. It's not very me, extensive plotting, but it needed to be done and I had it all in my head anyway only it was very messy. Now it's significantly less so and I can tell you that: 
> 
> * year 2 section will indeed be shorter than year 1 section but not by much  
> * year 3 section will be shorter than that (hopefully safely under 50k whereas year 2 will most likely be around 60-70k)   
> * year 4 section will also be pretty short and it will also be the section where Bad Things will start happening   
> *year 5 section is where _The_ Bad Thing will happen 
> 
> Let's see if I'll actually manage to stick to that!
> 
> Anyway, apologies in advance: this chapter is very much about Shakespeare. Like, they discuss it a lot. Uhhh, spoilers for A Midsummer Night's Dream and Twelfth Night? I guess? Is it even spoilers when it's classics? The next chapter will have a lot of theatre too but a bit less than this one and, in general, the whole story won't be Like This but I had to fangirl for a while, I'm sorry. Also, if this is anybody's chapter, it's definitely Jerusalem's, hence the quote at the beginning! 
> 
> If there's anything wrong with the Shakespeare quotes, it's obviously my fault, not the bard's. Also, the internet's fault. Enjoy (hopefully)! <3

Edwin Landseer, _Scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Titania and Bottom_

*

O, when she's angry, she is keen and

shrewd!

She was a vixen when she went to school.

~William Shakespeare, _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_

*

Kipp complains all the way to the auditorium stage, and then does wonderfully, voice booming and hands near in flight, like he was made for theatre.

“I want to be Mercutio, or else,” he tells them later, hair ruffled by Jerusalem’s hands.

“It’s _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ , remember?” Regina tells him, dabbing at the sweat on his forehead with a tissue. “Tragedies are for four and fifth-years.”

“Then how come the bastard had me read from _Hamlet_?!”

*

‘The bastard’ is their director himself, a so-called Teddy Willow, a fourth-year student from a posh family (“though really, who isn’t, at Wilgefortis?” Jerusalem wondered aloud, to which Easy barked at her and started flicking pencil shavings her way) rather than a teacher. He does things like pointing at kids with his finger and yelling ‘you, there!,’ says ‘alright, people’ every five minutes, and keeps swatting his open palm with a rolled-up script.

Aubrey decides it’s a wonder he’s not wearing a beret and a pair of sunglasses while yelling ‘cut!’ and ordering people to bring him coffee and apples.

“I’m as dedicated to theatre as Degas was to prepubescent ballerinas,” he tells them on the day of the audition. “So you squirts better not ruin this for me.”

Beauchamp, their English teacher, who’s meant to supervise, clears his throat, all reluctant disapproval. Beauchamp is a stern teacher, but he isn’t as stern after classes – he might call you a witless waste of space if you give the wrong answer in English, and then offer you candy ten seconds after the bell.

 _You’re only sixteen_ , Aubrey thinks hopelessly at Teddy Willow, but doesn’t dare say it. Instead, he stares at the pages he’s been given and swallows with dread when he sees what play they’re from exactly.

*

“Indeed,” Aubrey says miserably, staring longingly at the years-old donkey head propped on one of the auditorium seats. “How come?”

*

Jerusalem is the most dramatic Lady Macbeth Aubrey has ever seen.

“Do you think I overdid it?” she asks them later, flushed and excited, jumping up and down like she can’t calm down.

“Oh, definitely.”

“Do you even have to _ask_?”

“Somewhat, yes.”

“Oh, well, er… You were very good, though!”

“I’m looking for a teaspoon to dig my brain out through my nose with it, that’s how much you overdid it!”

They all know she’s got one of the main roles in her pocket.

*

“What do you mean, _you’re not doing it_?”

Regina considers Kipp, unimpressed.

“I’m just not.”

“But Jerusalem—”

“I’m not in the habit of doing things I don’t want to do just because Jerusalem tells me to,” Regina explains patiently.

“So what, all the times she dragged us over the school walls to somewhere, you _liked_ it?”

Regina hums thoughtfully.

“A change of scenery can be good,” she says at last with a lazy shrug.

“Is it too late for me to get out of doing it too?” Aubrey asks hopelessly, and Regina gives him such a pitying look that he buries his head in his script to hide his blush.

*

Quickly falls off the stage after uttering two lines, and then spends ten minutes insisting that his back is broken.

His back is _not_ broken.

*

Aubrey keeps his feet together and tightens his grip on the loose pages of _Romeo and Juliet_ act 1, scene 5, so that his hands will stop shaking. They don’t.

Frankly, it’s all quite ridiculous. He is not a teenage boy wallowing in misery and getting crushes. He is an amateur scholar in round glasses, for God’s sake. He has never given any thought to any girl’s lips, and he doesn’t see how he’s supposed to do it now, blushing pilgrims and all that, in front of people he’s bound to see every day for the next four years.

He doesn’t voice any of that, of course. Instead, he stammers clumsily through Romeo’s lines, holding on to the pages like they’re driftwood and he’s drowning, even though he near knows the scene by heart.

(He might not be a miserable boy with a crush, but it is a beautiful scene nonetheless.)

“ _If I profane with my unworthiest hand/This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:/My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand/To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss._ ”

Teddy Willow, sprawled in one of the front-row chairs, gives him a pitiful look and then reads out Juliet’s lines with a bored expression, chin in hand.

They’re on _O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do_ when Aubrey stops mid-sentence. To love is not to have, but it’s not to talk either. He doesn’t understand this – poetry, metaphors, and confessing things.

He only understands looking.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “But this is just wrong.”

He lets his arms hang limply, almost dropping the pages.

“Wrong _how_?” Teddy Willow demands, Jerusalem miming incomprehensible things behind his back.

“I’m butchering it,” Aubrey says, smiling sheepishly. “Shakespeare deserves better.”

“Good lord, that he does!” Teddy Willow says largely, then leans forward in his seat. “You could make a case for a shy Romeo, though.”

“You could not,” Aubrey says, rolling up the pages of the script the way he’s seen Teddy do, a quiet sort of an ‘I’m finished.’ “He tells Juliet everything he feels. He might not climb a balcony in the original, but there’s a reason why there _is_ a balcony in near every _Romeo and Juliet_ production. Romeo, he’s the sort to climb.”

Teddy Willow arches an eyebrow at him, like a challenge, and the relief of not having to read any more lines is so great that Aubrey forgets nerves and goes on.

“He’s supposed to be enchanted, besides,” he continues, and thinks of Dora Maar. He does know what it’s like, but not Romeo’s way. “Romeo’s life is before Juliet and after Juliet. He meets her, and that’s when it splits.”

“And you can’t read it like that?” 

Aubrey smiles. “No.”

“Interesting,” Teddy says. “Alright, get off the stage then, we don’t have the whole day, hmmm?”

He waves Aubrey away and all in all, Aubrey is relieved to go.

*

“You will help me direct,” Teddy tells him later, pulling him aside. “I can’t handle so many kids on my own, and you seem sensible. Also, a pushover.”

Aubrey chokes.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re perfect,” Teddy tells him, slapping his cheek in a friendly manner.

Aubrey sighs and wishes he had thought of doing what Regina did, earlier.

*

Up on the stage, a girl is struggling through Ophelia’s lines, and Aubrey takes a seat up in the fourth row, next to Kipp, who’s watching the girl in quiet amusement.

“If it’s _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ , I want to be Lysander,” he tells Aubrey once Aubrey settles next to him.

“I thought theatre would ruin your reputation?”

Kipp’s smile widens.

“Well, yes, but I love it so!”

“You _do_?”

“Mmm,” Kipp says, and won’t look at him. “There are many things you don’t know about me, Aubrey, friend.”

“Yes,” Aubrey agrees, confused. “I assume so.”

Kipp shakes his head and holds up his fingers.

“I have three big secrets.”

“I’m not going to be nosy and ask,” Aubrey says, taken aback.

“Don’t!” Kipp says, merrily. “Besides, only one has to do with you, and only partly anyway.”

“Oh,” Aubrey breathes, surprised. “That’s unexpected.”

“You have _no idea._ ”

Aubrey considers him in silence. He always seems to be holding something back, Kipp. It is surprising to learn that one of his secrets has to do with Aubrey, but it’s not surprising to learn that he has secrets in the first place, not at all.

“I will stick to not being nosy,” Aubrey says carefully, “but if you ever want to—”

Kipp folds his hand over Aubrey’s mouth, muffling his words, and flashes him a somewhat apologetic smile.

“Don’t say it,” he asks, pulling his hand back. “Don’t mention talking about it.”

“Why not?”

“Because you don’t know what you’re offering,” Kipp tells him easily, and shrugs his shoulders in that nonchalant way of his. “Because if you mention it, I’ll tell you some of your own secrets out of spite.”

“You don’t know my secrets,” Aubrey blurts, and Kipp laughs. He shakes his head, his face half-grimace, half-smile, something between exasperation and fondness.

“No,” he tells Aubrey. “You’re the one who doesn’t know them.”

he gets up, graceful, and Aubrey remembers how gangly and awkward he seemed sometimes, last year. Somehow, Aubrey’s missed that he no longer is.

“I’ll tell you this much: that thing you said up there? About Romeo’s life being split into before Juliet and after Juliet? How you couldn’t read it like that?”

Aubrey nods to show that he’s following, but frowns, unsure where Kipp’s going with it.

“Be lucky you’re not Pinocchio,” Kipp tells him with a soft smile. “Your nose would grow so long you’d surely overbalance.”

*

Easy’s audition turns into a shouting match before it well even starts. He only appears on the stage because Jerusalem drags him there, and then it’s all kicking and yelling about how he won’t, he _won’t_ , not in a million years, not if Aslan himself comes from fucking _Narnia_ and tells him to, and _fuck_ Aslan anyway, and fuck Jerusalem _too_ , and would she get _off_ him?

Teddy Willow watches with near morbid fascination and doesn’t do anything to put an end to it.

Easy’s trying to wriggle out of Jerusalem’s arms, pulling on her hair, face flushed, screeching about how he will _never_ , how this is all _stupid_ , how it’s a human rights violation, how he will ruin everything in the _world_.

That’s when Jerusalem starts tickling him.

And Easy — Well. He — _giggles._ Half a minute of it, and he’s begging Jerusalem for mercy, all fuck you, stop, _stop_ , please, okay, a _lright_ , I’ll do whatever you want, you hag, just _stop_.

Jerusalem does. Easy eyes the short distance between them warily, like he’s still contemplating escape. Jerusalem smiles devilishly, a silent ‘don’t you dare.’

“Here!” she chirps, slapping a script against Easy’s chest. “Read.”

Easy goes red, and Aubrey thinks it’s anger up until Easy mumbles that he can’t.

“Huh?” Jerusalem says, loud enough to carry.

“I said that I can’t!” Easy yells, arms crossed in front of his chest, something protective about it rather than defiant. “I can’t read it, alright? I don’t even understand what’s being sad!”

He’s shaking with anger and embarrassment, up on that stage, still so small, just thirteen, and Aubrey’s shaking, too. At first, he can’t figure out why, but then he gets it – he’s angry himself, because damn Jerusalem, and damn Wilgefortis, and damn Shakespeare, too.

Damn Aubrey himself, for not having seen this coming. They did _Macbeth_ in class last year, and he remembers now how Easy struggled with it at the time.

“It’s all archaic rubbish,” Easy complains, tearing at the pages. “It wouldn’t make sense to me even if I had a dictionary with me now.”

He _does_ have a dictionary with him, put away on one of the chairs with the rest of his things, and Aubrey remembers wondering about it before.

“Right, never mind that,” Teddy Willow says, slow and calculating. “The articulation! The way you yell! That must be some set of lungs you have! You’re _brilliant_.”

Easy gapes at him.

“I’ll give you a role and he, whatshisname, Glasses, will explain the archaic rubbish to you, how’s that?”

Easy looks away from Teddy, presumably to find Aubrey in the half-dark of the room, which he does, immediately.

“Alright?” Aubrey says across the dozens of feet, voice cracking. He feels like he’s inside a display case.

He feels like Easy is inside one, too.

“No, I—” Easy starts, then sighs, shoulders slumping slightly. “Yeah, alright.”

“Splendid!” Teddy says heartily. “Now get off my stage, heathens!”

*

Later, Aubrey tries to translate Act 1 and Act 2 of _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ into something simpler for Easy, who doesn’t understand Helena (“She’s his _spaniel_? She wants him to _strike_ her? _Neglect_ her? Just so she’s allowed to _follow_ him?”), dislikes Oberon (“wow, he sure likes to hear himself talk!”), and grudgingly respects Hermia (“she’s bearable, I guess”). He rolls his eyes at Helena’s dramatic _I'll follow thee and make a heaven of hell,/To die upon the hand I love so well_ , and Aubrey blushes but doesn’t explain the Elizabethan wordplay. They stop, exhausted, at _So awake when I am gone;/For I must now to Oberon_ , and when Aubrey glances at his watch, he groans.

“Almost ten,” he explains at Easy’s questioning look and frowns at how scratchy his throat feels. His eyes go wet and he takes a sip of his long-cold tea. He almost spits it back out into the mug, too – he’s of the opinion that Earl Grey, of all teas, should never be drunk later than ten minutes after brewing.

“You boys done?” Jerusalem asks curiously, spookily rising from behind the couch they’re on. “You’d make a lovely Puck, Easy, you know.”

Easy bristles, but Jerusalem has a point – Easy is small, almost elflike, big eyes and curly hair, bones like flutes, half-boy, half-doll, only too alive for the latter, so why not fey?

“Oh, I know you won’t play Puck,” Jerusalem says before Easy can start complaining. “He’s too enthusiastic, and not in an angry way either. You’d have to _smile_.”

“I _can_ smile.”

“Really, I’m just talking,” Jerusalem goes on, ignoring him completely. “You won’t play Puck, because _I_ will.”

“You should,” Aubrey agrees. She’s perfect for the role— all joy and mischief, except. “But will they let you?”

“I could cut my hair,” Jerusalem muses, winding a few locks around her fingers. “To look more like a boy.”

“You wouldn’t, not even then,” Easy says, staring anxiously at Jerusalem’s tangled mess of a hair. “What’s it matter, anyway?”

“It shouldn’t,” Aubrey says carefully. “We don’t know that it does.”

“I’ve seen _Hamlet_ live once, you know,” Jerusalem says. “It was a woman playing the lead, and she was _spectacular_. Mother was enchanted.”

The ‘so was I’ goes unsaid.

“Anyway, you should be Hermia,” Jerusalem tells Easy, stretching his cheek. He scowls at her and Aubrey, who meant to ask him why he’d agree to being in a play in the first place, won’t have to anymore – the answer is right in front of him. Easy’s mouth might hate Jerusalem, but his angry, angry eyes are all love.

*

They don’t cast Jerusalem as Puck, and when she doesn’t throw a tantrum, it feels like the quiet before the storm.

The list is up on the announcements board in the second-floor corridor, and Jerusalem is Hermia. Kipp is Lysander, and Easy is Demetrius (which, _Christ_ ). Lavinia is on there, too, as Helena, and below her, some third-year as Puck and Jonathan Small as Oberon.

“No,” Jerusalem whines when she sees his name. “No way.”

“Him, of all people?” Kipp says, clearly amused about the whole thing. “Lavinia, too! What a treat.”

“Why should _he_ play the king?” Jerusalem bristles. “I was supposed to be Puck, and he sure wasn’t supposed to be my Oberon!”

“I don’t want to play your lover either,” Kipp says lightly, even though he wanted to be Lysander all of two days before. “I don’t think I’m talented enough to fake the adoration.”

Jerusalem is watching the list too intently to bother kicking him.

“Anyone have a pen?” she asks innocently.

“Oh, you can’t just rewrite it,” Aubrey protests when she starts patting his pockets in search of one. “Hermia is a good role.”

“I don’t want a _good_ role,” Jerusalem says. “I want the best one.”

“See,” Easy says, curling his fingers around her wrist when she finds a pen in one of Aubrey’s pockets at last. “You don’t always get what you want.”

Jerusalem tilts her head indulgently, like she’s considering it, and then straightens her shoulders.

“Except I do,” she says with a sweet smile. “Eventually, I always do.”

Aubrey remembers this about her all of a sudden: how she doesn’t necessarily get things, so much as takes them.

*

Aubrey thinks a lot about Ida Rentoul Outhwaite, and how very _Midsummer_ her pictures are. He thumbs at his tie, and remembers how he couldn’t find it before Christmas and had to go home without it, then discovered it neatly folded beneath his stationery when he got back to Wilgefortis, even though he’d checked there before leaving.

He thinks it’s fitting, this play about enchantments, for a place like Wilgefortis, all paintings that seem to watch, rumours turned legends, and ivy clinging to the outer walls.

Still, somehow, it feels off.

*

He wakes up in the middle of the night and gets it: what has always been scary to him about _A Midsummer Night’s Dream._

It’s the thought of being made to love someone. Love, Aubrey feels, should not be imposing. Love, he thinks, is shy knocking, not a burglary.

He imagines Shakespeare cleverly cheating people into the happy ending of it all, all those marriages, and never mind that Demetrius loved Helena only under a spell. Aubrey doesn’t know what scares him more: that Demetrius didn’t get to choose that love, or that Helena should want it anyway.

 _The thing with boats is that once you get on_ , his mother says in his memory, _you can’t exactly get off._

Aubrey knows too many people who’d call it love: a painting up for sale going to the highest bidder, people yelling horrendous prices over each other, when really, love would be not having it up for sale in the first place, love is not keeping it to oneself at all, because how can you love something you put a price on when what you love is supposed to be priceless?

His mother, calling shooting ducks out of the sky love, when in fact, it was the very opposite. He imagines it now, a whole murmuration of birds, untouched and making shapes in the sky.

She lied to him, his mother, only Aubrey doesn’t yet know how exactly, or why. 

She lied to him, because she’s never, not for a second, loved him like she loves birds.

*

“Aubrey,” Jerusalem says the next day, serious for once. Her hair is up in a messy bun, stuffed full of pencils, and she has marmalade in the corner of her mouth, but her shoulders are pushed back, her feet neatly together. “Tell me all about Shakespeare’s comedies, ten sentences per each?”

If Aubrey thought about it carefully, he’d figure out why she wants to know, but he doesn’t think about it carefully on purpose, because he has the feeling that whatever it is she’s planning to do, he might actually end up approving for once.

He smiles and starts with _Much Ado About Nothing._ He doesn’t tell her that he only buys romance in Shakespeare’s tragedies, because he thinks she wouldn’t stop teasing him about it, not ever.

*

“Okay, so, Shakespeare and Marlowe,” Kipp says, nudging Aubrey with his elbow and wriggling his eyebrows. “Did they do it? Maybe? Probably? _Definitely_?”

“Do what?” Aubrey says carefully, feigning obliviousness. Kipp rolls his eyes at him, calling him hopeless, and later Aubrey doesn’t wonder at himself and doesn’t think of his father.

*

Well, he does buy Hermia and Lysander’s romance, at least, the ‘we can’t be together here, so let’s run away to somewhere else’ of it all, almost like a quest. Shakespeare, writing _Midsummer_ at the same time he did _Romeo and Juliet_ , two sets of star-crossed lovers and two diverging paths, _the course of true love never did run smooth._

Tragedy, or happy ending?

Aubrey doesn’t know if Shakespeare and Marlowe ‘did it’ but he knows that Marlowe was killed, and then—

And then Mercutio.

*

He _doesn’t_ buy Hermia and Lysander’s romance when it’s Jerusalem and Kipp. They practice, sharing one copy of _Midsummer_ between them, and they’re both good (Jerusalem is a poster girl for ‘though she be but little, she is fierce,’ and Kipp, forever the flirt, is great at professing his undying love and suggesting elopement) but it’s just too—

“Incestuous,” Quickly says, taking the words right out of Aubrey’s mouth. “It’s simply incestuous.”

Kipp does flirt with Jerusalem sometimes, but he never walks away after, like he does with other girls, which is proof he doesn’t mean it. Of course, him walking away from other girls is proof he doesn’t mean that either. Really, Aubrey doubts Kipp has meant anything ever, apart from confessing to having three secrets and buying a newsboy cap along with the rest of them last year.

“If they had children, they’d be deformed,” Easy says. “He’s decent at pretending he’s in love with her, though. Maybe I should take notes.”

He wrinkles his nose in distaste, and Aubrey can’t help a fond smile.

“They wouldn’t have children,” Quickly says, horrified. “Because ew.”

“Ew,” Easy agrees instantly.

“Anyway, are you all sure about being in the same room as Jonathan Small three times a week?” Quickly says, worried. “We don’t need any more broken noses.”

“He didn’t _break_ my nose,” Aubrey insists, rubbing it self-consciously. “He won’t have a football in the auditorium, will he?”

“No,” Quickly agrees mournfully. “He’ll still have his hands.”

*

During the first, very informal rehearsal, Teddy Willow lists off suggestions, and Jerusalem doesn’t bother to note any of them down on her copy of the script.

Aubrey doesn’t know what to make of that, but he has the feeling something is brewing.

*

“Just so we’re clear, I would _not_ follow you around like a dog,” Lavinia tells Easy, after. “Not _ever_.”

At Aubrey’s side, Regina smiles, amused.

*

Teddy Willow has his own artistic vision, but he’s certainly open to suggestions. He cares about theatre more than he is self-centred, and so, when someone proposes something, he at least listens before criticising, even if it’s finger puppets or some other such ridiculous thing.

When Jerusalem says “enough” and drops her script to the ground, then stomps over it carelessly on her way to the edge of the stage, it’s not finger puppets.

“I think we should give _Midsummer_ up,” she announces, decisive, in her voice made for rebellions. “It just doesn’t work.”

“Oh?” Teddy Willow says, not irritated by the rehearsal interruption, not yet. “How so?”

“Wasn’t it _Midsummer_ last year?” Jerusalem says. “How repetitive.”

“ _Midsummer_ is a great play,” Teddy says, automatic. “It does too work.”

“Everyone knows _Midsummer_ ,” Jerusalem argues.

“Yes,” Teddy agrees, staring at her like she’s lost her marbles. “Because _it’s a great play_.”

“So is, say, _Twelfth Night_ ,” Jerusalem says, defiant, chin tilted up, hand on hip.

“I have yet to hear why _Midsummer_ doesn’t work,” Teddy points out. “Switching to a different play is inconvenient.”

Jerusalem grins.

“ _Midsummer_ doesn’t work because you’re wasting our potential with it,” she says. “Watch carefully.”

She crosses the stage to where Easy’s standing, and when she slings an arm around his shoulders and squashes their cheeks together, strangely, he only arches an eyebrow and doesn’t shove her away.

Aubrey gets it before Teddy Willow does, and smiles.

*

“So these two twins, Viola and Sebastian, both survive the shipwreck and each thinks the other is drowned?” Jerusalem asked that day she had nine pencils in her hair.

“Exactly,” Aubrey confirmed. “Sebastian is saved by Antonio, who loves him, and Viola, disguised as a young man named Cesario, is in service of Duke Orsino. Viola falls in love with Orsino, of course, only he’s in love with a wealthy countess in mourning, Olivia, and sends Viola/Cesario to profess his love for Olivia in Orsino’s name.”

“And then Olivia falls in love with Viola/Cesario, I bet,” Jerusalem guessed, delighted, and Aubrey nodded with a smile.

“So she does. It’s quite the love triangle.”

“Hmm,” Jerusalem said, finally licking the dried marmalade off her mouth. “And then Viola falls in love with Olivia too and they live happily ever after?”

“Not at all,” Aubrey said with an apologetic smile. _Twelfth Night_ ’s happy ending was only pretending to be one, too. “Viola is very much in love with Orsino, remember?”

“So what, then? Everyone’s miserable? Surely not!”

“Ah, Sebastian appears, see, and, well, everyone mistakes him for Viola/Cesario. He and Olivia get married—”

“ _Married_?!”

“He’s very… _carpe diem_ , Sebastian.”

“What about Antonio, who loves him?”

Aubrey smiled sadly.

“It’s not that kind of love.”

“Isn’t it?” Jerusalem challenged.

“Well, we’d have to wake Shakespeare from the grave and ask him to know for sure. Anyway, Olivia and Sebastian, mistaken for Viola/Cesario, get married, and when it’s all revealed, Viola’s identity included, Orsino, who already loved Viola/Cesario as a friend, agrees to marry her.”

“Right. A bunch of idiots, then.”

“Sort of, yes.”

“I _love_ it,” Jerusalem said. “I love it _a lot_ , AA.”

The way her eyes glinted just then, Aubrey suspected she might have loved it too much.

*

“Don’t you see?” Jerusalem says now, pointing between her and Easy. “We look like siblings, don’t we?”

They do. Not from up close – Easy’s face is far more bony and pale, and he doesn’t have freckles – but from a dozen feet away, they’re almost the same height (Jerusalem has an inch on Easy, maybe), and they have the same messy, black curls.

“Oh,” Teddy says, leaning back in his seat and tilting his head. “I do see.”

“So?” Jerusalem prompts, excited. Easy blows a stray strand of her hair off his face, and it works in more ways than one: they don’t only look like siblings – most of the time, they act it, too.

“It’s a good idea, I’ll give you that,” Teddy admits. “But _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ is more recognisable, isn’t it? I think we should stick to it.”

Aubrey speaks up, clutching his copy of the script tightly, because isn’t that what he’s here for?

And besides, Jerusalem, wronged for not getting to play Puck, working to play a girl playing a boy, isn’t counting on him at all – she’s thought of it all by herself, and she doesn’t expect any help, which is why she should get it.

And then Easy—

“More recognisable, maybe, but less accessible,” Aubrey says after clearing his throat. “Linguistically speaking, anyway.”

Teddy turns to look at him, as does everyone else. Aubrey swallows and remembers making a case for Wilgefortis to his father, who wouldn’t look up from his newspaper.

This is easier.

“Do go on, Aubrey Allen,” Teddy says, impatient.

“He shows off in _Midsummer_ , Shakespeare does,” Aubrey says. “Titania and Oberon’s monologues are— This is Shakespeare, showing off his talent, and it’s beautiful, but it requires focus. _Twelfth Night_ is much easier to understand, and it’s, well, we’re at a _school_. You’ll be showing this to kids, really.”

“Right,” Teddy says, slowly. “What are you going to do about your hair, then?” he asks of Jerusalem, as if it’s decided.

“I can cut it,” she says with a shrug. “Or tie it in a clever way. Worry not.”

“I’ve never directed _Twelfth Night_ ,” Teddy says, considering.

“You’ve never directed _any_ thing,” Kipp reminds him innocently.

“Jonathan as Duke Orsino!” Teddy says, a sudden revelation.

Up on the stage, Jerusalem doesn’t scowl. Instead, she smiles.

*

“I’m helping with costumes,” Regina explains when Aubrey raises his eyebrows at the stack of historical books on fashion that she’s carrying.

“Right,” he says, fond. “Of course you are.”

*

Easy has never seen a play in his life and Aubrey is pretty sure he hadn’t read one till last year, either, but he’s made for theatre: loud and earnest, loud and not.

“ _She is drowned already, sir, with salt/water, though I seem to drown her remembrance again with more_ ,” he reads later that same day, and Aubrey can smell the ocean.

*

“What’s Antonio’s _deal_?” Easy asks Aubrey later still, troubled. He frowns at the library copy of _Twelfth Night_ , full of smudged pencil scribbles.

“He loves Sebastian,” Aubrey says slowly. “That’s what most of his lines are all about.”

Easy looks up at him, and there’s something earnest, almost naked about his face. He looks stark, like he’s just washed it with soap.

“But _why_ does he love Sebastian so much?”

Aubrey thinks about it and tries to remember _Twelfth Night_ , scene by scene.

“I’m not sure, actually,” he admits after a moment. “He just— He just loves him.”

Easy looks thoughtful for a moment, then goes back to reading through _Twelfth Night_ and doesn’t look up once.

*

“Jonathan Small,” Jerusalem says after having gathered them all in the common room, and says it like she’s introducing a completely new idea to them, like Jonathan Small is a project she came up with and named herself.

“What about him?” Aubrey says because he’s dreading the answer enough to want it over and done with, Jerusalem’s big announcement. She’s even dressed up for it: hair tied with her best ribbon and lip gloss.

“I rather want to kill him,” she says, calmly. “But that would be too ‘uncivilised.’ Mother would faint if she learned.”

“Oh, if that’s the only reason,” Quickly mumbles, rolling his eyes.

“He’s going to regret ever having been born all the same, once I’m done with him,” Jerusalem says, smiling sweetly.

“What exactly do you mean by ‘once I’m done with him’?” Regina asks, troubled.

“Are we putting centipedes in his pasta?” Easy guesses, half-apprehension, half-delight.

“But Easy,” Jerusalem says, fake-scandalised. “We’re _actors_ now.”

“So?”

“ _So_ ,” Jerusalem goes on, smile widening. “I’m going to seduce him.”

Quickly bangs his head on the arm of the couch, and then immediately starts massaging his forehead.

“Seduce him,” Kipp echoes. “Whatever for?”

“So I can break his heart, of course,” Jerusalem says with a shrug, like it should be obvious. “More than, I’ll chew it to bits, then spit it out, then stomp all over it, then set whatever’s left of it on fire.”

“But how do you know he’ll fall for you?” Kipp asks, only it’s a stupid question: Jerusalem’s right there, after all, standing in front of them, only fourteen and criminally beautiful already.

Besides, what Jerusalem wants, Jerusalem gets.

“I’ll make him,” she says simply, and Aubrey knows better than to doubt that.

“It’s unethical,” he dares point out. “Cruel, even.”

“He broke your nose!”

“Again, he didn’t _break_ it—”

“I think,” Regina says over them, “that it might work.”

Jerusalem stares at her, surprised, and Regina flashes her a small smile. Aubrey doesn’t have the energy to say _et tu, Brute?_.

“You’re crazy,” Quickly says, shaking his head, but Aubrey suspects that’s a compliment, for Jerusalem. “Simply bonkers.”

“Well!” Kipp says, clapping his hands together. “Crazy or not, do you have a plan?”

*

It’s only two days later, when Jonathan Small shoves little Bessie Lawrence on the stairs, that Aubrey stops thinking of ways to stop said plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I laughed quite a bit when writing 'he might not be a miserable boy with a crush but' about Aubrey because oh honey,, 
> 
> Anyway, the thing about accessibility -- I don't really know! What I do know is that when reading Midsummer, I had to consult my Polish copy every now and then to get what the characters were saying (not that the Polish copy was all that helpful), and when reading Twelfth Night, I was alright. As for the bit about Shakespeare showing off in Midsummer, there's a bbc In Our Time podcast episode where they talk about it for a bit, and it's a good episode, because they also discuss donkey penises and they're very British about it, all graceful amusement and matter-of-factness
> 
> (btw, the only ships I tolerate for Midsummer are Hermia/Helena and Puck/Oberon, and it is a sad, sad thing, the whole Demetrius fiasco) 
> 
> As for Shakespeare and Marlowe, I don't have proof of them 'doing it' or anything but y'know................................ neither of them strikes me as particularly Straight at least. Anyway, there's a theory about Mercutio's character being based on Marlowe? Which means that Marlowe must have been awesome and I should definitely read something by him
> 
> Finally, Midsummer is fun but! I thought Twelfth Night would work better, what with Jerry pretending she likes Jonathan in the future and him unaware (much like Orsino is unaware of Viola's pretending, though, you know, Jerusalem & Jonathan will not be a thing, whereas Orsino and Viola are a great ship, especially when you add gender identity analysis to it, and I'm sort of sad that I won't get to do that here but!! I will talk about it at least) plus I will need that Antonio/Sebastian mess to reference many times in the future. (Honestly, Antonio's character is literally 93% his adoration for Sebastian and 7% what he got up to before Sebastian, what a mess of a man). Also, Easy and Jerusalem playing siblings!!! I could not possibly pass that up
> 
> (I'm too lazy to always write the full name so it's Midsummer instead, but also whenever I write Midsummer I think of that horror Midsommar and it's very traumatising indeed) 
> 
> And yes, Kipp's three secrets are also the product of my obsession with the number 3 but also, he really has them
> 
> THE DONKEY/BOTTOM ON EDWIN LANDSEER'S PAINTING IS JONATHAN, THANK YOU


	3. dangerous liaisons, september-october 1999

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wherein things don't go as planned

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, I did totally steal that title 
> 
> Anyway! This chapter too doesn't have much in terms of romance buttttttt after the next one (which will be Alfie's chapter, btw, yay!) it'll be time for one of the chapters I'm most excited for. I haven't even written it yet but it's one of my favorites anyway :,)

Artemisia Gentileschi, _Judith and her Maidservant_

*

My Witch indeed is not so sweet a creature—

~Percy Shelley, _The Witch of Atlas_

*

Quickly is patiently dabbing at Bessie’s scraped knee with wettened cotton swabs in the common room, Jerusalem walking back and forth and telling them all about how she’s going to ruin Jonathan Small’s life.

“How exactly do you plan on making him think you like him, though?” Easy says, frowning at the beluga whale he’s drawing on Bessie’s other knee to distract her from the torn skin. “Your eye keeps twitching when you talk about him.”

Jerusalem stops pacing, salutes, and then bats her eyelashes.

“Howdy, Jonathan!” she chirps, overtly enthusiastic. “Can I touch your biceps? Oh, _swoon_!”

“He won’t buy that, you know,” Kipp points out. “Too fake.”

“Well, _obviously_ he won’t. I’ll just talk to him about how it’s _so_ interesting that I would play Viola and he would play Orsino, and doesn’t he think we should practice just the two of us since we have quite a few scenes together?”

“That might work,” Kipp admits. “Isn’t he dating someone, though?”

“Probably,” Jerusalem says with a careless shrug. “If making out with a different girl every week constitutes dating, that is.”

“You’re all very stupid,” Bessie says, staring at the beluga whale on her knee. “You’re here, in a good place. You should work towards staying, not towards getting yourselves expelled.”

Aubrey remembers April, library door open in the middle of the night and books rearranged into cruelty itself, and he remembers how his blood tasted as it dripped from his nose, too. He wonders how long till Bessie has her own miseries to remember, only— that’s right, she already does, three cotton swabs put aside by now, stained a reddish brown.

Bloodied knee her first month here, and she calls it a good place anyway.

“We won’t get ourselves expelled for toying with one prick’s maybe-feelings,” Kipp tells Bessie with a warm smile. “We’ve survived Jerusalem breaking a window with Aubrey’s Shakespeare sonnets, we’ll survive everything.”

“Do you want a turtle, too?” Easy asks, barely coherent, a pen cap caught between his teeth.

“Yes, but only one that will never ever mistake a plastic bag for a jellyfish,” Bessie tells him gravely. “Did the book fall on someone and hurt them when you threw it out the window?”

“Sadly, no,” Jerusalem says. “Now, what are fifteen-year-old boys into?”

“Alive people?” Kipp muses. “I think that’s it, in terms of standards.”

“Be serious!” Jerusalem snaps. “You’re almost fifteen yourself.”

Kipp smiles, something self-deprecating about it.

“I’m a bit of a special case though,” he says and doesn’t elaborate.

“Aubrey?” Jerusalem prompts hopefully, giving him an encouraging smile. Aubrey thinks of Dora Maar and then thinks of Juliet Capulet talking about names and roses.

“I like art,” he says, idiotically. “And literature.”

“I mean, what do you like in _girls_?”

“Their personalities?” Aubrey offers weakly.

Jerusalem looks around helplessly.

“Have you lost something?”

“Yeah, I’m looking for something to throw at you…” she says distractedly. Her eyes light up when she spots a cushion. Either that, or the folded chessboard next to it, but Aubrey hopes it’s the former for his own sake.

“The turtle looks pretty angry,” Bessie comments, poking her knee.

“He’s an anarchist turtle,” Easy tells her, grave. “He’s plotting to overthrow the government.”

“ _Off with their heads_!” Kipp exclaims dramatically, pointing his finger in Quickly’s direction. Quickly looks down, troubled, and pats himself on the neck as if to check that his head is still safely attached to his body.

“ _Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland_?” Regina guesses.

“I was thinking more French Revolution, but sure.”

“CAN YOU ALL FOCUS FOR A SECOND, PLEASE!” Jerusalem yells, and then, once they do, resumes pacing. “Since you’re all hopeless at being teenage boys, I’m just going to assume that Jonathan’s into bubbly, flirty idiots.”

“Is anyone _not_ into bubbly and flirty though?” Quickly says, then flushes red. Aubrey almost raises his hand before he realizes that it must have bee a rhetorical question.

“Maybe skip a band-aid for an hour or so,” Quickly tells Bessie, an almost-subtle change of topic. “Let air get to the scrape a little.”

“Treasure is not exactly flirty, though, is she—” Kipp starts, prompting Quickly to choke on air.

“I am _not_ in love with Treasure, _honestly_ —”

“Jerry,” Regina says, careful. “Just don’t be yourself.”

Jerusalem stops walking around to stare at her.

“How so?”

“He doesn’t deserve the real you,” Regina explains. “Not even when it’s fake.”

Jerusalem gives her a somewhat wobbly smile.

“Sure thing,” she says, quiet. “What was it that Shakespeare said?”

“He said a lot of things,” Aubrey mumbles, unhelpfully.

“Most of them dick jokes,” Kipp adds merrily. “So many dick jokes.”

“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them,” Aubrey recites. He doesn’t mean to, but it’s almost Pavlovian, providing a quote when prompted.

“Oh, Aubrey,” Kipp says, pretending to wipe a tear off his eye. “I always knew you had the hidden potential to be the Romeo to my Mercutio.”

“Wrong play,” Aubrey mumbles. “And we’ve already established I’d be a terrible Romeo.”

“The dick jokes, though!” Kipp says, mournful. “Think about the dick jokes!”

“Let’s not corrupt Bessie, hey,” Quickly says, throwing her troubled glances.

“She’s _thirteen_!” Easy protests. “ _I’m_ thirteen.”

“Yes, but you’re already corrupted,” Jerusalem says, waving him off. “Anyway—”

“WHY are you ALL so LOUD?” Lavinia snaps, appearing behind her quite suddenly, book in hand and a ribbon in her hair.

Lavinia is Olivia in _Twelfth Night_ because apparently Teddy Willow is intent on having her and Easy be romantically involved one way or another against all odds. When casted, she not only told Easy that she would never fall for him yet again but also, with that trembly aristocratic dignity that made Kipp cough with laughter into his sleeve, insisted that she would never fall for Jerusalem either.

“Well, of course you wouldn’t,” Jerusalem said easily at the time. “Since I’m a girl and all?”

It took Lavinia three seconds of intense frowning to nod.

“We’re discussing _Twelfth Night_ , of course,” Kipp tells her now, smooth.

“Oh,” Lavinia says, surprised. “Can I join, then?”

They’re all stunned into an awkward silence, but they really shouldn’t be. Lavinia has proven to only be pretending at hostility half the time, and her enthusiasm for literary discussions far surpasses her need for flaunting her wealth and calling people lowly peasants every five minutes.

“That depends,” Jerusalem says, suspicious. “Do you even have anything interesting to say?”

Lavinia tilts her chin up and then sits down, cross-legged, in one graceful move, folding like a chair.

“Well, let me tell you all about Viola, then,” Lavinia says proudly, arching an eyebrow at Jerusalem. “I daresay you need me to.”

She doesn’t leave them for half an hour, and when she heads off to sleep at last, Regina stares after her.

“She’s really smart, isn’t she, for such an idiot,” she says, amused. “I’d knit her a jumper, but she already hates that scarf I gave her, so.”

“She _says_ she hates it,” Jerusalem points out. “I’ve seen her wear it three times already, and it’s still September.”

“You made her a scarf?” Bessie asks, curious.

“I did,” Regina confirms with a wry smile. “Would you like one too? I’m knitting you a jumper, too, a blue one.”

Bessie blushes and tugs at some of the messy springs of her hair, so that when she says ‘yes, please,’ all they can see of her are her eyes.

*

The first proper _Twelfth Night_ rehearsal, Teddy Willow’s girlfriend, Frankie Stewart, is there. They make for an interesting pair, he over-enthusiastic and in love with himself, her sullen and quiet at his shoulder, failing to react to anything. Aubrey suspects she wouldn’t even flinch if he clapped his hands in front of her face, but then, he’s not the sort to try.

“He wanted her to convince him, you know,” she tells Aubrey when Teddy’s busy yelling at Kipp, who’s playing Antonio, about being too handsy with Easy, and ‘this really isn’t time for homoerotic subtext, Birdwhistle, save it for act 4!’. “He’s actually a big fan of _Twelfth Night_.”

Aubrey turns to consider her, still sullen, still unflinching. The sleeves of her uniform shirt are too long, only the tips of her fingers visible where the cuffs fall around her hands.

“He didn’t strike me as a huge _Twelfth Night_ fan,” Aubrey says carefully.

“Do you know how even after Viola’s revealed to be a girl and Orsino decides to marry her, he still calls her ‘boy’? He says something about her still wearing a man’s clothes, and how he’ll stop calling her that once she wears a dress?”

Aubrey nods. He does know – they talked about it that evening with Lavinia, how it might have meant something.

“Maybe she wears a man’s clothes when they’re alone, and then what?” Lavinia said, considering.

“Well,” Kipp said, smile spreading slow. “When they’re alone, she’s probably not wearing any clothes, hmmm?”

“Right,” Aubrey says now. “And Teddy likes that?”

“He thinks it’s important,” Frankie says and doesn’t explain. Aubrey doesn’t ask.

“Are you worried Jerusalem will get it wrong?” he says instead and has the chance to see Frankie smile for the first time.

“No, no, she’s quite good,” she assures. “I’m just wondering how many family members Teddy will want here, for the opening night. Never mind that, though. Care for a candy?”

She produces a bag of those out of her pocket, and Aubrey accepts one. He stops fighting it and wonders, for the first time in a while, what he’d ask Shakespeare if the man got up from the grave, and indulges himself with imagining the answers.

*

Jerusalem suggests extra rehearsals to Jonathan Small. He stares at her blankly, and says “who are you again?,” but not like he cares to hear the answer.

*

“ _If you will not murder me for my love, let me be/your servant,_ says Antonio,” Kipp whispers, almost into Aubrey’s ear. “Do you hate me for playing him?”

“Why should I?” Aubrey says without turning to look at him. He stills his pen and watches a blot of ink spread where he was writing ‘clever’ in his essay.

Not so clever after all, something nasty says in his head.

“Aubrey, do you know,” Kipp says suddenly, conversational, “I walked from one end of my house to the other once, with a stopwatch. It took two whole minutes.”

Aubrey thinks he gets about half of what Kipp is trying to say, and it’s all _I know_ , and _it’s like this for me, too_ , and _I understand, alright?_

“So who are you going to be after school?” Aubrey says, an acknowledgment of a sort. It doesn’t matter that they’re fourteen – these things get decided long before one can hope to have any say in the matter.

An heir to his father’s company, Aubrey thinks, something to do with boats.

“Hopefully,” Kipp says slowly, pressing his finger to the blot of ink on Aubrey’s essay, “I’m going to be happy.”

This Aubrey gets right away, and it makes him frustrated enough that he leaves without a word, essay near crumpled in his hand. He got his first package from home yesterday and Kipp must have seen – a jumper he forgot from home, a lavender bag folded lovingly inside it and a note from his mother wrapped carefully around it, a pair of socks ‘for Ezra, honey,’ and three books on law.

“Aubrey,” December Graham says when he bumps into her as he rounds a corner. “Hello.”

“Hello,” he says, taking a step back. “I’m so—

“You don’t look too well!” December says, snapping her fingers near his eyes. “Come have tea with me? I wanted to talk to you anyway.”

Once in her office, she does prepare tea first, leaving him to stare at the line of nesting dolls at the edge of her desk, arranged from biggest to smallest, three inches of space between each two. They’re lilac-blue and golden-haired, lips painted a ripe red, and the biggest one has quite a few scratches on it, paint chipped in places around the radiant smile. 

“How do you like them?” December asks, back to him. “I had them shipped from Poland. Apparently, they’re decades old.”

“They’re beautiful,” Aubrey says dutifully. “Really.”

“Think Ezra will like them? They’re a gift.”

“Oh,” Aubrey says, rubbing his temple. “His— Is— Was his family from Poland, then?”

“Yes and no,” December tells him, setting a cup with Dr. Seuss’ Grinch on it in front of him. “Ezra’s grandfather would have been eleven when the war started. He was a German Jew, and his family fled to Eastern Poland when Germany invaded the country. Many people did, then.”

“Does Easy know this?”

“I assume he’s been told,” December says, and starts carefully putting the set of dolls back together. “They hid in Poland for a while, then Lithuania. Ezra’s grandmother was Polish. His mother was from here. They met soon after Ezra’s father came here, in 1984, ha.”

Aubrey stares at the biggest doll, now the only remaining one. He wonders what December would say if he started talking about Easy’s fear of losing things, ever-present now that he sometimes gets them.

 _I don’t know how to lose things_ , he said after Monet _. I only know how to not have them in the first place._

“This is not what you wanted to talk to me about, though, is it?” Aubrey guesses, and December smiles, amused.

“Last year, when you walked in on me and my waste of a husband arguing, how much did you hear?”

Aubrey considers lying, except it’s hard not to hold it all against her: how the Monet was stolen only because she had it here in the first place, and how it wasn’t stolen _because_ it was a Monet, not at all.

“Every year, you sell a painting,” Aubrey recites, thinking of all those newspaper articles he’d pore over obsessively over the years, each headline leading him here, a breadcrumb trail of a sort. “Every year, a poor orphan gets offered a place here.”

December Graham nods, takes a sip of her tea, doesn’t have bruises around her wrists.

“You only sell the paintings so that the orphans will be admitted.”

December smiles.

“Indeed,” she confirms. “See, me and my husband, we have a deal.”

“Does he hate art this much?” Aubrey guesses.

“Oh, you have _no_ idea.”

It was one from her private collection this year – Rousseau’s _L’Artiste Peignant Sa Femme_ , and when Aubrey learned about it, he thought it fitting and wondered whether anyone had ever painted December herself.

“You’d sell more of them if he’d agree to more orphans,” Aubrey says, and wonders why it doesn’t feel like enough.

December nods.

“I’ll keep it to myself,” Aubrey promises and gets up, even though he only had three sips of the tea. “Ezra, he’ll only like the nesting dolls if he’ll get to keep them, you know.”

*

Jerusalem paints her lips red and smiles sweetly at Jonathan every time he walks past. She’s a wonderful Viola, getting as close to him as possible, adoring and bowing low, but when she suggests they go for a walk after, he waves her off, without bothering to so much as look her way.

She wipes the lipstick off with her sleeve and later, Aubrey cleans the shirt for her.

*

Aubrey doesn’t think it’ll end with the Monet and so he goes back to sitting cross-legged by the library door at night. It’s not about proximity now, and he feels idiotic. So what if someone decides to steal Dora Maar? He’ll hardly be able to stop them, nothing but a pen in his pocket, and even if it could be used as a weapon, Aubrey wouldn’t.

No one comes, and Aubrey thinks that the scariest thing about silence is how undisturbed it can be – how everything is a long, excruciating wait for it to be disturbed.

*

Jonathan tries to trip Aubrey up, mocks Kipp, and keeps sending Easy threatening glances, but he pays Jerusalem no mind.

“What’s his problem?” Jerusalem asks them later, angry, angry, pacing. “Am I ugly after all?”

“What, because a boy doesn’t like you?” Easy scoffs. “Maybe it’s because you’re friends with me.”

“His girlfriends, they’re blonde, ginger, brunette,” Kipp says, ticking the qualities off on his fingers. “I don’t see why he’d start being picky now.”

Regina watches Jerusalem wordlessly, thoughtful. Aubrey sends her a questioning look, but she only frowns and shakes her head.

“Maybe we should watch _Dangerous Liaisons_?” Jerusalem wonders aloud. “It’s the closest thing to a seduction guide I can think of, anyway.”

Later, Easy keeps grinning, and it’s unusual enough a sight that Aubrey asks him about it.

“It’s all just very Chagall’s _The Circus_ ,” Easy says with a shrug, and when Aubrey smiles, his own smile widens so suddenly that Aubrey thinks he’ll always be reminded of it, whenever he’ll hear the word ‘circus.’

*

Easy and Jonathan are only together in one scene, and yet Jonathan manages to almost succeed in pushing Easy off the stage when the teacher’s not looking their way.

“Cut it out,” Teddy Willow tells him icily, “Or I’ll have Glasses here play Orsino instead, and then what will your mommy say?”

Jerusalem shakes with anger, but, by the end of the rehearsal, she’s smiling at Jonathan anyway, hands on hips.

He doesn’t return the smile.

*

The third time Aubrey settles in front of the library door, he drifts off. Footsteps don’t wake him, but the kick to his ankle does.

“I wanted to borrow your history notes,” Easy explains, unimpressed. He’s wearing the socks from Aubrey’s mother, boxer shorts, and a jumper Regina made for him, mustard-yellow and far too big, sleeves covering his hands and the fabric almost sliding off one shoulder. “You weren’t there.”

“You wanted to borrow my history notes at—” Aubrey starts, then consults his watch, squinting in the dark. “Three in the morning?”

Easy narrows his eyes.

“I’m not the one sleeping in front of the library.”

“I don’t think the Monet was the end of it,” Aubrey blurts out, maybe because he’s still sleep-heavy, thoughts more cotton than synapses. “I think it’s only just begun.”

“How dramatic,” Easy says. Aubrey can’t make out the scars on his knees in the dark. “Do you think it’s lost forever, the Monet? Like _The Tower of Blue Horses_?”

Aubrey considers this silently and pats the floor next to him. Easy settles down without any complaints and Aubrey can see it then, a half of a bracket on his right knee.

“We don’t know that _The Tower of Blue Horses_ is lost forever,” Aubrey says. “It was seen a few times after ’45, wasn’t it?”

“A Joachim Nawrocki saw it in a youth hostel during the Berlin blockade, allegedly,” Easy confirms glumly. “It had slits in it.”

“Maybe it’ll reappear,” Aubrey says, even though he knows there’s not much hope for that. He remembers how for Easy, it’s not a group of horses in the painting, despite the plural in the title, but the frenetic movements of one horse. He remembers, too, how wolves are not really solitary creatures, and how when his mother met Easy in spring, she guessed that he was the orphan, and how it wasn’t because of his clothes.

When you say 1912, people think Titanic, but Aubrey thinks of Franz Marc first sketching the horses on a postcard to Else Lasker-Schüler (who, of course, had to flee Germany years later, too, Marc already six feet under), more rounded shapes than the later painting, less fever and more love.

Aubrey doesn’t ask what happened to Easy’s father, because he remembers what happened to Easy’s mother, and he knows that two wrongs don’t make a right.

“I don’t know that I _want_ it to reappear,” Easy says, staring at a square of moonlight on the ground in front of them. “If it reappears, someone will get their hands on it, God knows who.”

Aubrey presses his back to the library door and wonders, not for the first time, if it’s a good thing that _Dora Maar au Chat_ is December Graham’s.

*

“That stupid _bastard_ , how _dare_ he not pay attention to me, I am _so_ out of his league anyway, I mean, _seriously_!”

*

This time, Easy wakes Aubrey up by tugging on a lock of his hair. In Aubrey’s lap, the torch he borrowed from Quickly is still on and his copy of _The Illiad_ is open on ‘his descent was like nightfall.’

“Yes?” Aubrey says, trying to sound polite. Easy sighs, and shakes his head.

“Move,” he commands and then presents something thin.

“Mmmm?”

“Jerusalem’s lucky hairpin,” Easy explains. “It’s only fair that I borrow it, since she made us search for it in mud.”

“Right. Right, okay, but why do you need— Oh, no, Easy, that only works in films, doesn’t it?”

“It works,” Easy assures, already toying with the lock. “I checked.”

“ _Excuse me_?”

“I practiced,” Easy says with a shrug. “After the Monet.”

Aubrey doesn’t point out that most people would focus on security after being stolen from, not on cheating locks into opening, because he doesn’t think it would go over well.

“How come?”

“I thought it could be a useful skill to have,” Easy explains, which, really, is not much of an explanation. “And look, I was right.”

Aubrey opens his mouth to say something, except nothing comes to mind, so he silently watches Easy work at the lock instead. Once Easy pushes the door open, he tries not to remember the rearranged books, _Thanks for the Monet, Alfie._

“But why—”

“You only sleep a few hours every night,” Easy says calmly, already heading inside. “I sleep even less.”

Aubrey frowns at that. Sometimes, he fools himself by pretending that Easy has given up on proving Jonathan Small and every other bully wrong, and doesn’t read classics under his covers well into the night, exhausting himself into cleverness.

“You shouldn’t.”

“But I do,” Easy shrugs. “I figure we can swap? I’ll sleep for a few hours, you’ll keep watch, then the other way around.”

“ _Here_?”

“Where else?” Easy says, turning to face Aubrey. He stares at him like Aubrey’s an idiot, and in the light of the torch, he looks otherworldly, like he doesn’t belong here, a puzzle piece from a misplaced box. “You’re the one who loves her.”

He doesn’t have to point his finger towards the back of the library for Aubrey to know who he means.

“Easy,” Aubrey says, impossibly fond and about to protest. “You are insane.”

Easy smiles.

“Next time,” he whispers, leading the way, “we should bring blankets.”

*

“It’s not working,” Jerusalem grumbles, tearing ribbons out of her hair. “Why is it not working?”

“I think I’ve figured it out,” Aubrey volunteers. “You’re too…”

“Too _what_?”

“Too feisty,” Kipp pipes in. “He likes them quiet and submissive.”

“That sounds disgusting,” Jerusalem complains.

“Well, it is,” Kipp admits. “He treats girls like furniture. Well, the sort of furniture you kiss, so not like furniture, actually, but you get the idea. He wants them to stand there and giggle and blush, not argue.”

“I giggled!” Jerusalem protests. “I blushed!”

“You were also very forward,” Kipp points out. “He’s of the sort to eventually get a quiet wife that will cook for him, iron his shirts, and remember his schedule for him.”

" _Now_ you're telling me--"

“I have an idea,” Regina says from where she’s sitting cross-legged in an armchair, playing with her pen, an unfinished poem in her lap. “You won’t like it.”

“Well, let’s hear it,” Kipp prompts, clearly intrigued.

“He does prefer them quiet and submissive,” Regina says without looking up from her poem. “Which is why you should let me try instead.”

A silence falls, but only for a moment.

“Sorry, what?”

“I should be the one, well, seducing him,” Regina says with a small smile. “I sort of fit the description, don’t I?”

“No, you don’t!” Easy protests, getting to his feet. “You _don’t_.”

“He’s right,” Kipp says, shaking his head. “You’re not easily-manipulated, naïve, or even shy.”

“Except I look it, don’t I?”

Aubrey nods, ignoring Jerusalem’s scowl and Easy’s betrayed look, because he remembers thinking Regina shy at first just because she was quiet, and he’s not above admitting it.

“I see how it could work,” he says. “But are you sure you want to do it?”

He doesn’t think Regina would, of all people.

“I won’t enjoy it,” Regina admits. “But it needs to be done.”

Quickly snorts.

“It really doesn’t, though! You lot are _crazy_. Normal people don’t seduce bullies! Normal people tell the teacher about the bullying or suffer in silence!”

“It’s certainly very _Twelfth Night_ in its own right,” Kipp says, a corner of his mouth twitching. “You know, very Malvolio.”

“Teddy’s still looking for ‘a perfect Maria’” Jerusalem reminds Regina. “Maybe try that instead, if you’re into revenge.”

“I’m not into revenge, you hypocrite,” Regina says, strangely fond. “I’m into my friends being happy.”

Jerusalem watches her for a moment, then shakes her head.

“You’re not doing it,” she says, decisive. “It was my idea, and you’re not doing it.”

Regina uncrosses her legs and gets to her feet. She tilts her head, watching Jerusalem impassively, and she’s such a small thing, short and almost thin, round-cheeked with mousy hair, still all watercolour painting refusing to dry.

“Stop me,” she says, chin up, and when Jerusalem opens her mouth but doesn’t volunteer a retort, she smiles.

Later, Aubrey finds Regina in the library, a book of Dickinson’s poems between her elbows. She smiles up at him and he tries to return it. She laughs at his efforts.

“Why are you doing this?” Aubrey says, pulling up a chair. “It doesn’t seem very you.”

Regina watches him in silence for a moment and then closes her book.

“It _is_ very me,” she insists, then wrinkles her nose. “Well, I suppose I see where it’d surprise you. You did write ‘integrity’ on my paper. You know, when we had to write an adjective on everyone’s notebook page last year in class?”

Aubrey nods.

“It’s not so much about morals for me as it is about loyalty, I suppose,” Regina continues. “Say, Aubrey, what would you do if one of the others came to you, hurt or upset?”

She regards him curiously.

“Try not to panic,” Aubrey laughs weakly. “Offer tea and advice.”

“What do you think _I_ ’d do, then?”

Aubrey thinks about it carefully for a moment. 

“Offer comfort,” he says, eventually. “Make tea, too. Knit them something warm later.”

“Yes, that’s true,” Regina admits. “But that’s not necessarily _all_ I’d do.”

Aubrey remembers a football hitting him in the face, how Regina ran to get help while Easy stayed and almost threw rocks.

“But last year you didn’t—"

“No, I didn’t do any of that stuff, slugs in beds, insects in books, that’s true, but I _will_ do this.”

They stare at each other for a moment, and somehow, it feels like Aubrey’s not sitting in a chair, like instead, it’s freefall.

“ _Why_?”

“Because I need to,” Regina says simply. “If I don’t do this now, I will always wait to do something else at a different time.”

“I don’t understand why you _need_ to—”

“Because I care about you,” Regina says, and then frowns when Aubrey goes quiet. “This upsets you.”

“Yes,” he admits, somewhat reluctantly. He’d rather pretend it doesn’t, but Regina of all people would surely see right through him, and she deserves honestly anyway.

He expects her to frown, but she smiles instead.

“May I interest you in my theory of why it upsets you so?”

“Go ahead,” Aubrey says, taken aback.

“It’s not that it’s immoral, seducing Jonathan only to break his heart. Well, alright, it is that, too. You do have a strong set of morals and you are quite the upstanding citizen,” she starts, flashing him an amused smile. “But it’s not just that. I think that’s the easiest for you to digest, actually. What makes you so uncomfortable is that I care this much about you. It makes you feel like you’re imposing on me by having me worry. And, on top of that, you didn’t know this about me before now, and this upsets you because you hate surprises.”

Aubrey stares at her, amazed.

“You’ve gathered… data, and you’ve drawn certain conclusions, and now you have to reconsider those,” Regina continues softly. “You’re not used to learning that you didn’t have all the information, even though you’re humble enough that you shouldn’t be surprised at not having had it. I think you _aren’t_ surprised, but it still upsets you anyway.”

For a moment, Aubrey struggles for words.

“You’re right,” he admits eventually.

“I know,” Regina says with a smile. “Was that very Han Solo of me?”

“Very _what_?”

Regina huffs a quiet laugh, shaking her head.

“Oh. Oh, _of course_ you wouldn’t know this. You probably know Hamlet’s soliloquies by heart though, don’t you?”

“…Maybe.”

This time, she laughs loud enough that Alfie shoots them an amused look from behind his desk and presses a finger to his lips.

After that, Regina keeps laughing anyway, only into the crook of her elbow.

*

After December Graham gives Easy the matryoshka, he stares at it for the longest time.

“I hope it’s not worth too much,” he confesses later, when it’s just him and Aubrey, and Aubrey knows that it’s not a _I couldn’t accept it if it was_ but a _maybe they won’t take it from me if it’s not._

The second time they break into the library, Aubrey spends his watch guarding not only Dora Maar, but the dolls, too, staring at the biggest one’s ruby-red smile and hoping that the silence, terrifying as it is, will stay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so, the nesting dolls you can buy in Poland usually look [like this](https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-souvenir-stall-at-mikolajki-mazury-lake-district-poland-56600112.html), but the set December gets Easy is more [like this](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B072K52B8K/ref=sspa_dk_detail_0?psc=1&pd_rd_i=B072K52B8K&pd_rd_w=IyBvk&pf_rd_p=1055d8b2-c10c-4d7d-b50d-96300553e15d&pd_rd_wg=nO15d&pf_rd_r=2959T0WTRQXCMBZ0BPRN&pd_rd_r=447dcac3-36bc-4ba6-9795-bb2457c8852e&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUFFSjAxN0VWNlJFUVAmZW5jcnlwdGVkSWQ9QTA3NDc2NTkxRjlET1NGMjJHMzFRJmVuY3J5cHRlZEFkSWQ9QTA5NDAxNTcyVTNUUUtJOFdDNktIJndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfZGV0YWlsJmFjdGlvbj1jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ==), only with some blue elements as well. This one is not Polish but it Could Be. Anyway, I just love matryoshkas so much and they're all over the city I went to high school in so there's really no excuse for me not having one-----------  
> (well, there's the excuse of them being quite pricey, I guess)


	4. open doors, october 1999

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> where they meet the past head on

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This shouldn't have taken me as long as it did but, in my defense, my family decided we should go for a holiday even though, well, covid, so every day was like *goes for a 15 miles long walk*. ~~And then the Polish presidential elections happened and now it's like *goes for a 15 miles long walk then sobs for three hours* instead but the good news is that I'm so pissed off that this story will be even more gay than originally intended~~
> 
> Anyway, Alfie! I am actually working on some extra chapters of his that I'll probably post as separate parts of the series but for now, have this

Joanna Antosiewicz, _Pinocchio_

*

And kneeling at the edge of the transparent sea I shall shape for myself a new heart from salt and mud.

~Anne Carson, _The Beauty of the Husband_

*

Everyone wants the Monet back, but Alfie doubts anyone wants it back quite as much as he does, not even Ezra Weiss himself, and so, eventually, December lets him help to at least try and get it back.

She didn’t tell him everything back in April, December, because Alfie wouldn’t let her. He almost regrets it now, sitting on a tall barstool and nursing an overpriced drink, wanting for a man that either will come meet him or won’t.

“I’m perfect for the job,” Alfie told December weeks ago with a reassuring smile. “I look very unassuming, don’t I?”

Three people have walked into him already, his drink sloshing and good riddance.

Alfie hates the place – it’s a basement room, filled with cigarette smoke, everyone whispering instead of talking out loud, the stone walls the sort of moist he’d wipe his hands after touching. The only thing he likes is the sole chandelier, a sort of stained-glass art nouveau thing that looks like it belongs in an antique store and not in a place where the floor is beer-sticky but half the customers wear pricey suits anyway.

Alfie asked December what kind of a place it was when she explained he’d have to head to London, and she had to think for a while before she settled on the vague ‘appropriately shady.’

A French song, something sweet, is playing in the background, and the chorus repeats three times before Alfie checks his watch, his leg jittering. He keeps himself from picking on his suit – a washed-out grey, to match his… well, everything – and refuses a refill of his drink, curling his fingers around the cold glass.

He remembers, suddenly and unhelpfully, Yante reading to him about otters, and almost reconsiders the refill.

“Mr. Rose?” someone says, in a smooth RP accent. The man – one Clarke Linde, though ‘God only knows what his real name is,’ December said – is wearing a suit also, a worn thing, tight across the shoulders. His hair is not quite sleeked back, and his eyes are rather ordinary. Alfie expected someone arresting, but the man looks like an overworked accountant, and when he extends his hand, it’s almost casual, no hidden threat, no promise, no nothing.

What December told Alfie about Clarke Linde is this: he knows things, and he likes money, the more the better, never mind the source.

“Hello, nice to—”

“I quite dislike small talk, actually,” Linde cuts him off, waving his hand lazily. He doesn’t bother climbing a bar stool, only regards Alfie curiously. “I hear you’re after a Monet.”

The correspondence was risky, and December licked the envelopes closed all the same, called it chess.

Sometimes, you don’t think three moves ahead, she told Alfie, flicking his nose. Sometimes, two is enough.

“ _Open Sea_ , 1866,” Alfie confirms in a low voice. He glances around furtively, very much aware he’s doing it all the while. “I’ve lost it, see.”

“Nasty, that,” Linde acknowledges with an apathetic half-shrug. “They’re quite childish, aren’t they? Your December Graham and the other one, I mean.”

‘The other one’ being January, the shadow December sewed to her heels Peter-Pan-style once and has regretted keeping ever since.

“The Monet,” Alfie says after clearing his throat. “Have you heard anything?”

Someone knocks their elbow into Alfie’s shoulder and doesn’t bother apologising. Linde stares in silence and then clicks his tongue, clearly discontent.

“Not here,” he says, almost irritably. “Follow me, will you?”

He moves away from the bar and walks towards a side corridor where the loos must be, pushing through the almost-crowd, and Alfie thinks of inevitable things.

_See, I’m the person who joins you so that you can be the kind of person people join, how’s that sound?_

As Alfie follows the man into the corridor, he vows to himself that he will never fall again – from now on, he will only ever climb.

*

“It’s nothing personal, you understand,” Clarke Linde says with an apologetic smile once Alfie joins him in the half-shadows.

Alfie has a generous blink of a second to brace himself before a hand seizes his wrist and bends his arm backwards and a knee pushes into his back, shoving him against the wall.

And this, too: another hand briefly folds over Alfie’s forehead so it won’t hit the wall before sliding away, and he knows this skin, he remembers, he wouldn’t have forgotten – he _tried_.

“Why, hello there, Alfie,” Yante says merrily, three – four? – inches from Alfie’s ear. “Long time no see!”

The hand that’s left his forehead slides over his mouth before Alfie can reply, and the other forces his wrists together.

“What are you going to do with him anyway?” Clarke Linde asks, unimpressed, hands in pockets. 

“Keep him locked up in a cellar and torture him for a month, of course,” Yante says, flippant, and taps two of his fingers against Alfie’s lip. “Fuck off now, would you?”

Linde shrugs and goes, so compliant that Alfie wonders how much they paid him exactly.

“Right,” Yante drawls. “Where was I?”

“Something about torture,” Alfie reminds him dryly against his palm, which is, as always, warm.

“Oh, but that was a joke, Alfie,” Yante sing-songs. “I’m not into all that.”

“Yes,” Alfie says slowly. “I know.”

Yante laughs, delighted.

“Cheeky, cheeky.”

“ _I hate you_.”

“You know what,” Yante says after a moment’s deliberation. “I might be into _that_.”

“Did you really pay the guy to, what, tell you where I’d meet him so you could… manhandle me and…?”

“Mostly, it was to shut him up, but you’re a lovely bonus,” Yante explains lazily. “January wants you gift-wrapped and delivered to his doorstep, see.”

“I’m not much of a prize.”

“No,” Yante agrees simply, and Alfie can’t tell if it’s a lie. “But he’s hoping she’ll come looking for you, see.”

December would, of that Alfie has no doubt.

“Why send _you_?”

“I’m good at these things,” Yante says, two inches from Alfie’s ear now. “And besides, I volunteered.”

Alfie sighs.

“You put so much effort into that whole… masquerade,” he says, letting his forehead drop against the wall. “Really, that first coffee was all it took. You could have spared us both all the weeks that followed.”

For a moment, Yante is silent, save for breathing, and Alfie hates it – how he’s heard him silent save for breathing before, a companionable sort of silence, ready to be filled with all the things they would say to each other and with all the ways they would touch each other or already had.

“But Alfie, I just couldn’t help myself,” Yante says, and it takes him a moment. “You’re such a delight, after all.”

He means that the torment must have been worth it.

He can’t mean the coffee, and Norfolk, and the National Geographic.

He _doesn’t_ mean any of that.

Suddenly, Alfie is grateful that he has his back to Yante and can’t see his mess of a face, because he longs to cup his hands around it – not tender but touch anyway – and feel the scars. It’s felt strange for months now, not having familiar roughness under his hands, even though he didn’t use to touch Yante’s face all that often at all, back when they were—

Back when.

I can tell you about the scars, December offered in April. I don’t know all of it, but I know some.

“It’s that librarian blood,” Alfie echoes, and laughs, somewhat hysterically. Yante’s hand twitches, and then he curls it slightly, as if to catch the sound, which is when Alfie bites it, hard.

Yante yelps and shakes his hand, and Alfie shoves him away and half-runs out of the corridor. Yante follows, but by the time Alfie stops to have a look, there’s a round table with empty glasses on it between them and clusters of people all around them.

“Some bite, that,” Yante drawls, head tilted to the side. “I thought you were more of a vanilla sort of a bloke.”

Alfie makes a point of spitting and then wiping his mouth after, carefully maintaining eye contact.

“Yes, that’s fair,” Yante says, expression unreadable, and his lovely face just as mismatched as Alfie remembers. (His fingertips itch and itch and itch.) “Only make no mistake: you’re only about to get away free because I’m letting you.”

Alfie remembers December calling Yante January’s sickle (harvest tool, she said) and he knows that at night, he’ll think of how being cut is being alive. 

“You’re letting me,” he points out, and then turns around and leaves, his hands all dead, dead, dead skin.

January’s mistake is that he often underestimates people, see, December told him weeks ago. He might be smarter than me, but that doesn’t mean I’m not smart myself.

“You’re only letting me leave,” Alfie whispers into the hand that is hopelessly, helplessly his, “because I’m letting you let me.”

When he falls apart in the middle of the pavement, nobody notices, but then, he didn’t expect that anyone would.

*

Clarke Linde was their red herring, and Alfie hopes that January really does think them so stupid that he won't realise.

*

“How did you know he wouldn’t actually kidnap you?” December asks him when he comes back and unknots his tie.

“I didn’t,” he says truthfully.

“Oh, Alfie.”

*

January overlooks people because he thinks them stupid, but December claims that he overlooks May MacKinnon because he thinks her unimportant.

“Moreover,” she adds, smiling slyly, “he’ll never expect me to talk to her.”

She doesn’t explain why exactly January wouldn’t expect her to talk to May MacKinnon, and then drags Alfie to talk to her anyway.

She lives southwest of London, this May, in a country house that seems obscenely big for someone who’s not even married and doesn’t have anyone to share it with.

“Ah, she _is_ married,” December corrects him as she parks, very inelegantly, right across the driveway. “He hardly ever stays here, is all.”

“Oh, I see. It’s one of _those_ marriages, then?”

“Less antagonistic than mine, I bet,” December says with a shrug. “She doesn’t love him, of course. She can’t.”

She leads Alfie up to the front door, flat shoes quiet on concrete, and then pushes it open and waves him in.

“Shouldn’t we ring the doorbell?” Alfie says, hesitating on the doorstep. “Shouldn’t the door be _locked_?”

“May, she’s a scaredy-cat, but she never locks the front door,” December whispers with a mischievous smile. “I like to think it’s because— Well, actually, I _don’t_ like thinking about it that much, not at all.”

She briskly leads Alfie through the house, tugging on his wrist, too fast for him to take in any details. What he does have time to register is that most of the rooms are all birchwood furniture and huge windows that let a forever of light in, and more free space than he himself would know what to do with.

Quite a few paintings, too, but then, that’s the one thing he expected.

When they stop in front of an ajar door, Alfie can hear Marianne Faithful’s _As Tears Go By_ play inside, _my riches can’t buy everything._ December pushes the door open without hesitation, but luckily, it doesn’t creek, and so Alfie has a few seconds to take in the room before the woman inside it turns their way. It’s the most spacious one yet, a sofa, a radio, a piano, a painting, and potted ferns, but not much else, almost all of the opposite wall glass, a green garden on the other side. There, bathed in sunlight and with her back to them, stands a woman in a white silk shirt and a pencil skirt, a teacup in hand. She’s slight and her fair hair is up in an elaborate chignon, and Alfie suspects that when he sees her face, it’ll be severe.

It’s a surprise, then, that when December clears her throat and the woman whips around, she looks naïve and sweet, silver glitter on her eyelids and a pink blush on her cheeks, her smile a pastel thing.

It’s a surprise when she drops the teacup, too.

“December,” she says, startled, and doesn’t even glance at the shattered porcelain at her feet.

“May,” December acknowledges with an arched eyebrow and a wry smile, then tilts her chin at the painting on the wall. “I take it the Matisse is still your best shot at a lure?”

“Well,” May MacKinnon says in a thin voice, waving her hand in the direction of the painting but not taking her eyes off December for one second. “It seems to work after all, doesn’t it?”

Alfie doesn’t recognize the painting – a room, an open window, and a woman seated on the balcony – but if it’s in May MacKinnon’s private collection, it means that once, December must have wanted it.

Wants it still, perhaps.

And then, the woman in the painting— her hair— she—

“Oh, that’s not why we’re here, though,” December says joyfully. “This is Alfie, my dearest librarian friend.”

May reluctantly – _very_ reluctantly – glances away from December to look him over.

“Oh dear, you’re very pale,” she comments with a troubled frown. “Would you like some water?”

December snorts and Alfie doesn’t elbow her, because he realises that even his shoelaces aren’t aristocratic enough for this house and that crude gestures surely won’t help in winning this small individual dressed in silk over.

“He’s fine, May,” December assures, grinning at Alfie with delight. “Well, apart from having misplaced a Monet.”

May watches her in silence for a moment, then steps around the remnants of her teacup and walks up to December, shoes almost soundless on the floor. She reaches out and lets her fingers hover – one inch closer, and they’d be framing December’s chin.

She has a girl’s hands – pink fingertips, soft skin, no callouses, nails too short to break.

“You haven’t been drawing,” December comments, scrutinizing May’s palms without reaching out to touch.

“Well, you did say my drawings were no good, remember?” May says with a graceful smile. From up close, she looks vaguely otherworldly, her features too soft, and Alfie thinks that she’d spoil if someone touched her with dirty hands, and that she’d break into pieces much like that teacup if she fell off something, a porcelain doll of a woman. She looks anything between seventeen and fifty, strangely ageless, like something beyond time, as if, were Alfie to come back here in a decade, he’d find her unchanged.

“I didn’t say they were no good, your drawings,” December protests. “I only said they had no soul, and I ended up fixing that for you anyway, didn’t I?”

May gives a vague smile.

“It didn’t take,” she says with a tone of deep regret. “Lately, I’m finding that everything I draw is quite soulless, see.”

December watches her for half a minute, and Alfie thinks he gets it now – why January would never expect December to come and talk to this person.

“The Monet, May,” December says, merciless. “I bet you know something.”

“I gave all that up, remember?” May says, lofty, and steps away, hands dropping to her sides. “I have a house now, and a husband, and tea parties.”

“Yet you still know everything anyway,” December says, her mouth set into a tight line. “Yet your name always comes up.”

“Funny, that,” May says with ostentatious disinterest. She walks up to the open piano, turns off the radio set on top of it, and presses a few keys, high sounds like breaking glass or a stifled cry. “I never actively try to learn anything, do you know? The gossip just comes in, quite uninvited.”

“Well,” December says, shoulders going tight. “You do leave the front door open.”

A low sound from the piano now, and drawn-out too, almost petulant.

“Rude, Dee,” May says sadly. “Very rude.”

“Stupid, May,” December throws back. “Very stupid. Just because you’re hoping—”

A few keys now, in quick succession, an almost-melody, half-mourning, half-threat.

“Anyway, with all that gossip that comes to you because you have nothing better to do than sit here and receive it, surely you must know—”

What comes just then sounds very much like the most dramatic _Swan Lake_ sequence.

December rolls her eyes.

“Dee hates me for marrying rich,” May says, smiling at Alfie over her shoulder in an almost conspiratorial way. “Hates me for it, even though she did very the same thing herself.”

“I don’t—”

“Which makes me think,” May goes on after one low note from the piano, “that what she really hates is that the rich buffoon _I_ married has too short of an attention span to be spiteful. Or perhaps she hates herself for marrying rich and simply projects?”

“Or _perhaps_ ,” December spits, “you could cut it with the clever remarks, and either help us or not?”

May blinks at her in a slightly dazed way, and Alfie can’t tell if she’s playing with them or if it’s genuine.

“Certainly,” she says finally, with a near blissful smile. “Care for a cup of tea, first?”

December sighs but agrees to it, and the three of them have it there on the sofa ten minutes later, the broken teacup a few feet away stubbornly ignored.

“I really don’t know much about your boy Monet,” May tells them, managing to sip the almost boiling-hot tea without slurping.

Alfie can’t help but mouth ‘your boy Monet’ to himself.

“I don’t need you to know much about Monet himself, which, by the way, you do,” December says, cutting, fingers gentle around her teacup but her expression all storm. “I only need you to know about one specific painting of his.”

“ _Open Sea_ ,” May says, an admission if Alfie’s ever heard one. “It’ll be mighty hard, getting that one back. It’s not even one of his best works. One may say it’s not even one of his _good_ works.”

“It’s of sentimental value,” Alfie says and doesn’t add, for one orphaned boy of thirteen. “And it is quite good.”

“It’s a _Monet_ ,” says December.

“Please, refrain from yelling at me, Dee,” May says, and puts her teacup away as if she expects an ambush, “but you’re really quite the snob, aren’t you? You always have been.”

Alfie snorts into his tea, because, _well_ , and May flashes him a warm smile.

“ _You_ ’re telling _me_ _I_ ’m a snob? _Seriously_?”

It’s not that often that Alfie gets to see December truly upset.

“Just teasing, just teasing,” May says sweetly. “I adore you, after all.”

“That you do,” December says with narrowed eyes. “The Monet?”

“I’ll ask around,” May promises. “You can come next weekend; I should know something by then.”

December quirks an eyebrow.

“Phones exist, you know. Do you think this will work better than Matisse?”

“I do, you know,” May says after a moment’s thought. “Occasionally, you tend to show remarkable self-restraint when it comes to your own indulgences, but this Monet business isn’t about you at all, is it?”

“It was a painting I acquired,” December says, cross. “And it was stolen from me.”

“Not exactly from you, I hear,” May says, raising her eyebrows at Alfie. Her eyes are an unsettling sort of grey, so pale that even when she’s looking at him, it seems like she’s not.

“You’ve heard quite a lot, then, haven’t you,” December snaps. “Have you talked to August?”

“Yante?” May says with a discontent frown. “No, he hasn’t stopped by in _ages_. January wouldn’t send him here, and so he won’t come. Well, maybe he would, but he has to pretend that he wouldn’t, so he doesn’t. The last time was… let me think… two, three years ago? He tracked dirt all over. Ruined my upholstery, and all that. A _nightmare_.”

Something is open inside Alfie and has been for a while. He can’t shut it, like a stubborn door, and it hurts, everything that waits behind it.

“Do phone me if he pays you a visit,” December chirps. “I’m quite intent on killing him, see.”

Later, Alfie, pathetic as he is, will tell her not to kill Yante, not ever.

“Aren’t we all, Dee?” May says philosophically, even though Alfie can’t imagine her so much as swatting a fly. “Aren’t we all?”

“One more thing,” December says, and takes a deep breath, which is so unlike her that Alfie braces himself. “I need you to find me October.”

The pause that follows feels significant.

“Berry?” May says eventually, fingers twitching. “Whatever for?”

“I could use a Yante of a sort,” December says with a shrug. “A proper thief, I mean.”

May laughs quietly and shakes her head.

“Berry is nothing like Yante,” she argues. “She’s not one for blind loyalty.”

“Isn’t she?” December says, and it sounds like a challenge.

“Well, it’s irrelevant,” May mumbles, frowning at her teacup. “I don’t _like_ her.”

She sounds about twelve.

“Just because she doesn’t buy your whole—”

“She’s _rude_.”

“So am I,” December says, then smiles, almost wolfish. “And you adore me so, remember?”

“She’s… ruder.”

“I get that you might not want to talk to her,” December says after downing her tea in three gulps, “but frankly, I don’t care.”

“And you think I have any idea how to get in touch with her _why_?” May demands, and she sounds— she was childishly irritable before. She’s angry now.

“Because she’d let you find her,” December says simply, “and I believe that’s enough.”

“I don’t.”

“Look, May,” December says, all business now. “Learn what you can, at least consider getting in touch with October, and I’ll— I’ll come over to spend some time with the Matisse, hmmm? I’ll take a look at your drawings, too, if you—”

“That won’t be necessary,” May says, cheerful but too abrupt. “Now, if I’m not mistaken, it’s almost three o’clock. I do have to talk to my ferns in a quarter of an hour or so at the latest, you know. They get quite cross if I neglect them.”

Alfie tries to school his expression into polite indifference, whereas December openly snorts.

“Point taken,” she assures May, and gets to her feet. “See you soon, I suppose.”

“Yes,” May says, thoughtful. “I suppose.”

She doesn’t walk them to the door but Alfie waits until they’re back in the car before he asks anyway.

“So, what’s the story?”

December sighs and folds her arms across the steering wheel.

“Do you know,” she says, staring at the house. “Sometimes, I still have no idea. I— I quite fucked it all up, with her, and she has every right to be… She’s not wrong, you know. A part of me does resent her for marrying rich, and it’s messed-up alright.”

“Because you married rich yourself.”

“Yes, that, but also how she never had anyone. She’d always repeat it and no one listened because her parents were loaded and it seemed like— It was a bit of _The Boy Who Cried Wolf_ situation, but, in the end, that’s no excuse, and we did all prove her right. The world almost ate her, and we almost let it.”

“I think,” Alfie says slowly, “That it’s time we both got drunk.”

December laughs.

“You know what,” she says, smiling at him with fondness. “It really is, and I even know a place…”

Later, Alfie will wonder if May MacKinnon is the sort of person who tries to glue broken teacups back together, but just then, he’s too busy trying to laugh all his sorrow away and laugh the door inside him closed.

*

When Alfie gets back to his flat a bit before midnight, there’s a book on his pillow.

His heart misses a bit, and he wonders if it’s _The Waves_ (does he want it to be _The Waves_?), only no, the cover’s the wrong colour.

Alfie almost falls over twice trying to get to the bed, and when he trips and collapses onto the mattress, he has to grope blindly for quite a while before his fingers close on the book’s spine.

It’s _Pinocchio_.

There’s an inscription inside, ‘I lied’ in slanted handwriting.

Alfie laughs.

“I know you lied,” he whispers. “Only I’m not sure what was a lie and what wasn’t.”

I can tell you about the scars, December offered in April, and Alfie said no. He would learn all about Yante’s scars, he decided back then, but he would hear it from Yante himself.

He falls asleep with his shoes on and his cheek pressed to the cover of the book. He dreams of cliffs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The painting in May's house is Matisse's _Woman with a Red Umbrella Seated in Profile._ It's semi-important. 
> 
> I'm so so so sorry for constantly introducing new characters :,) Clarke Linde is not important at all. I'm not saying he'll never appear again but I won't blame you if you forget him, he's pretty irrelevant. Now, May, she's very important, and so is the yet-to-be-introduced October. May and December, they have a Past. Anyway, please forgive me aaand the next chapter will be a) long b) weird c) crazy d) hopefully fun e) full of Easy & Aubrey 
> 
> Also, it hit me the other day that once upon a time, when I first mentioned this story under one of my drrr fanfics I didn't actually mean this story?? Because I said something about the past 5 years of my life being all about that story and All The Useless Things has not been a thing for that long. It's been in my head for 2 years tops and, initially, it was supposed to be about war spies, not art (also, at first, Easy was a spoiled rich kid, not literally every other character, and Aubrey was, believe it or not, outgoing, and didn't have a name and was just, not himself at all). The story I've been living for the past 5 years is something different and I was planning on posting that instead of All The Useless Things but I can never commit to anything, so spontaneous art thieves story it was and now here we are. Why am I telling you this? Probably so you don't think I've been planning this mess of a story for 5 years because............. it doesn't have a good enough plot to justify that. (Actually, the other story's plot might be even more of a mess, now that I think about it. Oh well.)


	5. nightwalking, october-november 1999

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> initiation ceremonies, almost-conquered fears, and the beginnings of touch, or: a study in peer pressure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GUYS, I’m so sorry for taking so long but uni paperwork is killing me like nothing ever and it’s a monster of a chapter, almost 9k words 
> 
> It’s also a really weird one but! It has some cliché romantic stuff! Also, underage drinking and some arguably much worse stuff done because of peer pressure, be aware (nothing actually super disturbing, I don’t think?). I absolutely don’t condone, but um neither do the mcs at least
> 
> Also, this chapter has a very specific clue relating to Sparrow and I am only telling you this because it was an unintentional, 100% accidental clue. I was writing it and it hit me that I wrote the bit and I was like, wow either my subconscious is all for consistent character work or my.. conscious? is just very stupid. Anyway, there is A Clue, though I don’t think I myself would remember the stuff it relates to if I was reading the story so...
> 
> Apart from that, the things that happen in this chapter are ridiculous, but quite crucial to Easy, Aubrey and Treasure’s (of all people) character development. Quickly, too, to an extent. Also somewhat inspired by real events. More on that below. ALSO, this chapter has a somewhat sassy Aubrey. He's just tired of everyone's bs, tbh. 
> 
> And, because the story has so many characters, and they must be hard to remember, especially with my not-so-frequent updates, **I've made a list of all the ones that aren’t main just in case** but I can't post it in the notes because too many words blah blah blah, so it's at the beginning of the chapter instead, as much as I hate it

*****the list of secondary characters*****

Treasure Little – in Aubrey’s class, Quickly’s crush though he won’t admit it, a sweetheart, will eventually be a pretty important character (fun fact: back when Useless Things was only a thing in my head and set during wwii, she, Aubrey, and Easy, were all 3 the mcs, and her name was Anna) 

Teddy Willow – the freak who’s directing Twelfth Night, a bit older than Aubrey, a drama queen, has family issues of some sort (more on that 2-3 chapters from now when another semi-important character will be introduced)

Frankie Stewart – Teddy’s stoic girlfriend, though God knows why she puts up with him 

Jonathan Small – the asshole bully, who (I almost forgot about it, knows how to paint) because, sadly, assholes can be talented too. I know, I’m devastated, too

Gordon Earnshaw & Christopher Finney – first appear in this chapter, older guys, kinda assholes, not important. They might appear in the future but they don’t matter much; popular kids and sons of Influential People but then who isn’t, at W.

Malcolm Graham – December’s asshole husband who one day was like, sure you can have orphans at your school, but only if you sell some of your paintings *evil laughter* and now here we are

May – one of January’s 12, though she stays away from all the art theft mess and the others’ bullshit. Still knows all the gossip, though. Was rich. Married rich. She and December have A Past. She and October also have A Past.

May’s husband – … exists 

October/Berry – one of the 12, female, yet to be introduced (soon!) and let me tell you, I just can’t wait 

Marge – a librarian at Wilgefortis because Alfie, as much as he loves the library, technically has a life. Old enough to remember wwii, should probably retire. Scaary.

Lei – Sparrow’s buddy. (I’m sorry, I just love the word). A homeless orphan and the child of Chinese immigrants who died in a fire that only Lei survived (I’m sorry), met Sparrow on the street. Makes freaky angels out of animal bones because why not. Gets involved in January’s shenanigans. Eventually, sort of one of the main characters? 

Louis – the blind boy from Easy’s orphanage that Easy was writing letters to, who got moved somewhere else before Easy’s second year at W. Will eventually be very important and I can’t wait because I love him <3

Bessie Lawrence – December’s new orphan, sort of adopted by Easy and the others, likes marine biology, shy and smart, precious 

Miss Oakley – the school matron, mostly absent because I can’t keep track of all these people

Clarke Linde – the guy Alfie met up with “for information” to throw January off. Not that important 

Beauchamp – The English teacher, stern but kind of cool? He supervises the theatre productions though he’s Not Very Good at it. Case in point: this whole chapter 

Maureen Barkley – a rich woman in her 40s who’s Sparrow supposed to sort of seduce for info, even though he told January that any sort of seduction stuff was the one thing he wouldn’t do (that’s not /exactly/ what he told him but let’s leave it at that for now)

November – only mentioned once, talking to Lei during January’s ‘party’ 

Richard Longborn – the headmaster, wears a toupee and is a dick, though a mostly harmless one, because the Grahams pay, so the Grahams rule. 

Michael & Peter – boys Easy shares a room with, unimportant 

Trudy Wishaw – Regina and Jerusalem’s religious roommate, also quite unimportant

And I think that’s probably 95% it? Anyway, enjoy the most ridiculous chapter I’ve ever written for this story!

*****end of list*****

*

Allen Egan, _Midnight Walkers_

*

Why does the hat of night

fly so full of holes?

~Pablo Neruda, _The Book of Questions, vi._

*

Three things happen on the Wednesday before Halloween:

Regina starts talking to Jonathan Small, Treasure Little is given a role in _Twelfth Night_ , and Aubrey sees a book he’s never heard of.

*

The first thing Regina says to Jonathan Small in, well, ever, is ‘be quiet.’ As seduction goes, Aubrey can’t imagine it proving successful, but it’s very satisfying nonetheless, watching Jonathan surprised into silence because a girl he didn’t know existed is watching him calmly and telling him to shut up.

It’s probably the lack of anger that has him gape instead of snapping: there’s something absolute about how unimpressed Regina looks. She’s not telling him to shut up because he annoys her, only because she thinks him an unwelcome interruption, and then, there’s how little she blinks.

Aubrey would gape, too.

Jonathan was in the middle of laughing at Easy for how he’ll have to wear make-up for the show, to make him more similar to Jerusalem, and Regina interrupted him, calm but insistent.

“Don’t you know?” she says now, after an uncomfortable silence stretched too long. “We’ll _all_ wear make-up. Theatre, see.”

She quirks an eyebrow at him, and she has no lip gloss on, and her jumper is two sizes too big, and her bun is messy, and it doesn’t matter.

Boys like Jonathan Small are used to getting whatever it is they want – so used to it, in fact, that they learn to want things they can’t have, just to prove that they will have them anyway.

As soon as Jonathan realises he can’t have Regina, he’ll want her – Aubrey knows that much. What he doesn’t know is whether Jonathan will bother realising it, but he’s been staring at Regina for a minute already, and, well.

“You know,” Kipp says, wonderingly. “This might just work.”

Aubrey hopes it will, for Regina’s sake, and, also for Regina’s sake, hopes that it won’t.

*

They only find their Maria because Treasure Little comes to bring them snacks during rehearsal.

“Only authorised persons allowed inside,” Teddy Willow barks at her when she steps into the auditorium.

Treasure, so pale that each individual freckle stands out, holds up a box of biscuits.

“I brought provisions,” she says gravely, like they’re on the frontline, and Teddy frowns, motionless, for a full minute before waving her in.

Five minutes later, Treasure is feeding him biscuits, handing him a new one whenever he’s to the last two bites of the previous one, and he’s chatting at her because Teddy would gladly chatter at walls, except they don’t make humming noises to show that they’re listening.

Treasure is excellent at humming.

“… she’s witty, she’s persuasive, she’s cunning, and I can’t _find_ her!” he complains, crumbs flying every which way. “Jerusalem there would make a splendid Maria, but she’s an even more splendid Viola, and I can’t have her play both of them! All the kids that didn’t get a role would come at me with pitchforks if I did, surely, never mind that neither of them is good enough…Not to mention, the audience would get confused. There’s enough mistaken-identity mess in the play as it is…”

“… _so/crammed, as he thinks, with excellencies, that it is/his grounds of faith that all that look on him love/him;_ ” Treasure reads slowly over his shoulder, from the much-tormented script Teddy has open in his lap, “ _and on that vice in him will my revenge find/notable cause to work_.”

Teddy nods distractedly.

“That, only scornful and vicious,” he sighs mournfully.

Treasure reads the fragment again, very scornful and vicious indeed. A biscuit crumbles in Teddy’s hand as he listens, and half of it falls to the ground.

“Sweet _Jesus_ ,” he says, dazed. “Perfect, that! You’ve got the role, bravo.”

Treasure frowns at him, clearly confused.

“Who? Jesus? Where?”

“ _You_ ,” Teddy says, and takes her by the arms, then gives her a shake. “ _You_ ’ve got the role.”

Treasure blinks at him.

“Oh, but I couldn’t,” she says, glancing at the script. “I would die from stage fright.”

“I don’t care, as long as you do the dying after the last show,” Teddy says, dismissive. “This is non-negotiable.”

Treasure turns to Aubrey and stares at him helplessly.

“It _was_ pretty perfect,” he tells her with an apologetic smile.

“Et tu, Brute?” Treasure says as her shoulders sag.

“See, you’re already quoting Shakespeare!” Teddy says, enthusiastic. “Have a biscuit,” he adds as if it was him who brought the box along and not Treasure herself. Aubrey wouldn’t blame Treasure if she kicked Teddy, but he’s not surprised when she doesn’t.

Later, when they tell Quickly that Treasure got a role, it takes eight minutes before he cracks and asks them if they think he could help with stage decorations.

*

Aubrey only spots the book because he knocks it off a chair on his way past. It falls off Teddy Willow’s showy, leather bag and, instead of falling cover-up, it spreads open on one of the pages instead.

 _And so good-night. And remember, Egbert, please,_ black _gym-shoes and not those white things you use for squash._

Aubrey closes the book and can’t refuse himself a glance at the title before hurriedly putting it away.

He’s never heard of _The Night Climbers of Cambridge_ , before, but he knows two things for sure: they’re nowhere near Cambridge, and the book most definitely has nothing to do with theatre.

In a way, it soon turns out that only one of the two is actually true.

*

On Halloween, three hours before it happens, they’re all spread out on the carpet in the common room, a gigantic sheet of thick paper open between them and surrounded by paints, Easy and Regina’s hands stained pink and purple. Because decorations are not critical to _Twelfth Night_ like they would be to _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ , Teddy yelled about artistic liberty in their general direction earlier in the day and ‘just make it look pretty, Weiss.’ Since then, Aubrey has tried arguing historical accuracy, but it’s hard to argue anything when it comes to a play set in a fictionalised kingdom, so Easy’s been ignoring his suggestions and gleefully spreading vibrant pinks all over countess Olivia’s tapestry, Regina quietly helping him colour.

“So as of now, you’ve politely told him to shut up three times,” Jerusalem says, frowning at the fuchsia swirls. “How’s that seduction?”

“I’m improvising,” Regina tells her patiently. “I think he’s warming up to me.”

Jerusalem snorts.

“No, she’s right,” Kipp says with a grin. “The third time, he actually did shut up, right away, and not from shock either.”

“Is seducing people a transferable skill?” Bessie Lawrence asks with a troubled frown. She’s been helping with the tapestry too, fingers stained lilac, and she keeps watching how paint spreads whenever Easy dumps a brush in one of the mugs they filled with water.

“Certainly,” Kipp says, waving his hand around. “You can apply it everywhere, to get a promotion, to get out of paying a fine, to hitchhike without having to pay for gas money…”

“Stop corrupting her,” Aubrey chides.

“It’s alright,” Bessie says. “I’ve already determined that approximately 83% of all that mister Kipp says is not to be taken seriously.”

Easy releases a gleeful, cackling parody of a laughter.

“Surely, 83% is an exaggeration?” Kipp says, tilting his head. “I’d say it’s closer to 79.”

“Why would you call him mister, anyway?” Quickly says, eyeing Kipp suspiciously.

“He’s tall,” Bessie explains simply.

“So’s Aubrey,” Quickly points out with a scowl.

“Yes, mister Aubrey is tall, too,” Bessie agrees. “Even taller than mister Kipp, though only by an inch.”

“Oh, I see,” Quickly sighs. “I don’t suppose _I_ ’m a mister?”

“Not really, no.”

Kipp laughs, loud enough for someone to yell at them to shut up from the other side of the room, and pretends to wipe a tear off the corner of his eye.

“Please, don’t call me mister,” Aubrey begs. “I can start slouching if it helps.”

“I won’t then,” Bessie says simply. “Aubrey.”

“You can call _me_ mister,” Kipp says cheerfully, “but only if I get to call you miss!”

Bessie seems to consider it for a moment.

“Alright.”

“I’m starting to see why Van Gogh cut his ear off,” Easy complains, making a disgusted expression.

“He was, er, mad,” Aubrey says, then flinches when Easy glares at him.

“Perhaps I’m mad by now, too! It used to be a mental asylum, after all, wasn’t it, Wilgefortis.”

“Sure it was!” Jerusalem pipes in. “That’s why Quickly has nightmares every other night, don’t you remember?”

“I have nightmares every other night because I’m omniphobic,” Quickly says, dignified. “I’d have nightmares in a unicorn den, too.”

“A unicorn den,” Kipp echoes, shaking his head. “Anyway! I do think Reggie here will win Jonathan over sooner or later, and without even trying, too!”

“I _am_ trying,” Regina insists. “I did tell him to stop talking. Three times.”

“How’s that trying?”

“Talking to him at all takes effort,” Regina explains. “He’s quite unpleasant.”

“Quite unpleasant!” Jerusalem scoffs. “Tell that to AA’s nose.”

“He’s quite unpleasant, isn’t he, AA’s lovely nose?” Regina says, turning his way. “Jonathan Small, I mean.”

Kipp laughs, delighted, and Jerusalem throws a cushion at him. It misses and hits Quickly in the face instead, after which it takes ten minutes to convince him that no, he does not have a concussion. By the time they’re supposed to be in bed, the tapestry is only half-finished, Bessie is asleep in Regina’s lap, a paintbrush clutched in her hand, and Easy has listed twenty-three terminal diseases that could spring from getting hit with a cushion, and no matter how much Aubrey convinces Quickly that names such as ‘walpugpeestrum faecesalis’ are clearly made up, he just won’t stop panicking.

In the end, it’s not surprising that Aubrey feels like he hasn’t gotten any sleep by the time someone shakes him awake hours later, but the deep darkness outside his window, the moon high up in the sky, sure is.

“Shoes, coat,” the someone hisses at him. “Shoes, coat, and no questions, or so help me God.”

Aubrey looks around, disoriented, and when his eyes adjust to the darkness, he notes that Kipp and Quickly are already up, the latter protesting quietly and the former trying to shush him.

“Is there a fire?” Aubrey demands, sleepy.

“I said no questions,” the shape that woke him up barks. “ _Shoes._ ”

“I wonder if there is a fire,” Aubrey mumbles.

“Shut it!”

“You said no questions,” Aubrey whines in protest. “That was an expression of doubt.”

“Less expressing, more getting dressed,” the shape snaps as Kipp giggles.

“Delightful,” he whispers at Aubrey, amused. “I wish Easy was here to see it.”

“ _I_ don’t,” Aubrey complains, tugging his shoes on. “I do wonder what’s going on.”

“If I had a gun…” the shape whines.

“This isn’t the USA,” Quickly squeaks. “No guns.”

“You don’t say,” the shape says, dry, and pushes Aubrey towards the door once Aubrey has grabbed his coat. “In a line, with the small one in the middle.”

“I’m still growing,” Quickly protests, offended, but dutifully takes a place between Kipp and Aubrey.

“Walk,” the shape commands. “And don’t even _think_ of yelling. One peep and I’ll make your life a living hell.”

“Would it be more Dante Alighieri or Hieronymus Bosch?” Aubrey asks, curious. “I wonder,” he adds hastily when he remembers questions are not allowed.

Kipp sniggers.

“Hurry up,” the shape snaps, a circle digging into Aubrey’s back.

“That feels like a rifle, but it can’t be,” Aubrey says, stumbling forward. “Is that a _vacuum cleaner tube_? I wonder.”

“Why aren’t you like this during the day?” Kipp whispers from the front of their three-man line.

“It’s the crushing anxiety,” Aubrey tells him. “It feeds on daylight.”

“ _No talking_ ,” the shape snaps and leads them down the stairs.

Ten minutes later, they’ve crawled outside through the ground floor bathroom window and they’re huddled on the grass outside Wilgefortis. The others are there, not just Jerry and Easy, but everyone from _Twelfth Night_ , too, and Aubrey is suddenly very much awake.

Regina and Quickly are only doing decorations, but there’s no doubt in Aubrey’s mind that this is about the play. 

“If even one hair falls from my head, my father will sue,” Lavinia announces in her most posh voice but the dark shapes discussing something a dozen feet away don’t pay her any mind.

“Whatever’s happening, I’m excited,” Jerusalem says, jumping up and down in joy. “Do you think we’re about to break the law?”

“I think we’re being abducted,” Quickly says. “We’re being abducted, and I need to pee.”

“Better hold it,” Jerusalem advises. “They might use it for experiments if you don’t.”

“My _pee_?”

“Sure.”

“Do you really not know what this is all about?” Kipp says, amused. Aubrey glances at him and Kipp catches his eye and smiles, wry.

They both know.

“No, but I can’t wait to find out!” Jerusalem chirps. “Why, do you?”

“Let’s just say we’re definitely not here for an extra rehearsal,” Kipp says, enigmatic as ever.

“I had an awful dream, and they woke me up in the middle of it, and so now I’ll have to remember it, _always_ ,” Easy complains, watching the dark figures with drawn eyebrows.

“What was it about?” Regina asks. “The dream?”

“It was that painting, _Saturn Devouring His Son_ , only I was the son, and Jonathan was Saturn, and we were both wearing clothes, _thank God._ Also, Aubrey was there, standing next to us, just watching, and telling me all about the proper use of the Oxford comma.”

“Really,” Aubrey sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. “You shouldn’t eat before sleep, you know.”

“I _didn’t_!”

“Did, too,” Jerusalem says, shaking her head. “You were biting your nails half the time we spent discussing Regina’s seduction ploy.”

“That’s not—”

“Is, too,” Jerusalem interrupts. “Self-cannibalism. Very sad indeed.”

“Alright, listen up!,” one of the shadows says. It does not sound like the rude one that led them here. It does sound like Teddy Willow. “Theatre is not for cowards, and so come along!”

It’s not much of a speech, and knowing Teddy’s love for dramatics, they still have a sermon of some sort to look forward to. Aubrey considers walking up to Teddy – who’s not all that scary now, after weeks of their directorial co-existence – and demanding to know what this is all about, but they’re herded like cattle before he can make up his mind, directed towards the wall that surrounds the school grounds, and escaping the small crowd could mean getting trampled, so Aubrey obediently follows the others instead.

“Oh, don’t tell me,” Lavinia groans when they get to the tool shed. “We’re going to the lake, aren’t we.”

“Maybe you’ll get to take a swim in it again,” Jerusalem teases, and Lavinia makes a growling sound that’s not even a little bit aristocratic.

They have them all climb over the wall, of course, one by one. Fifteen minutes later, they come to the lake indeed, only not from the side where the old bridge is, but where there’s no footpath, the shore still muddy after last week’s rain.

“Don’t tell me they’ll want us to get in,” Quickly whispers, horrified. “I’m _not_ getting in. We’ll all get pneumonia, or worse.”

“Worse than pneumonia?” Kipp says, doubtful. “It’s just water.”

“Maybe it _is_ a rehearsal,” Easy says, staring at the lake. “It starts with the twins surviving a shipwreck, _Twelfth Night_.”

Everyone’s whispering, but Aubrey hears the sound of a matchhead scratching the side of a box anyway, a second before fire blinks yellow in the dark. Soon enough, three torches are lighted, and the dark shapes prove to be Teddy Willow, Frankie Stewart, Christopher Finney, who’s directing fourth and fifth-years’ _Macbeth_ , and Gordon Earnshaw, who directed the second and third-years’ _Midsummer_ last year.

Aubrey knew the latter two’s names long before coming to Wilgefortis, and he stands up straight, a Pavlovian response to seeing the sons of people his father has dined with.

“ _Cowards die many times before their deaths_ ;” Teddy recites dramatically. “ _The valiant never taste of death but once_.”

“Tonight’s motto, if you will,” Christopher says with a grin.

Easy makes a show of shielding his eyes and looking around.

“What, now?” Quickly squeaks, watching him.

“I’m looking for the sacrificial altar, is all,” Easy says, dry.

“We’ll spare you the speech about traditions,” Gordon says, voice booming. “It’s all reheated soup each year, anyhow.”

He knocks his torch into Teddy’s.

“Here’s what’s happening: to be in a play, any play, you must first deserve it,” Teddy says and smiles devilishly. “A silly little initiation ceremony, hmmm?”

“Oh,” Jerusalem breathes. “Hooray.”

“Mmm,” Kipp hums. He sounds doubtful.

“The first task!” Christopher exclaims after Teddy bumps his torch with his own. “Frankie, dear.”

Frankie passes him a big mug, expression impassive as always. The mug has an ugly, Siamese cat on it.

“This one’s hardly Herculean,” Gordon says once his torch has been bumped. “Fill it up and then down it, in one go. That’s all.”

Quickly fists the fabric of Aubrey’s coat.

“Does he mean _the lake water_?” he whispers. “He does, doesn’t he? Oh _God_ , but I won’t. I won’t, I won’t, _I won’t_.”

Aubrey’s only half-listening, busy staring at Teddy and waiting for Teddy to meet his gaze. Aubrey’s father never went to a school like Wilgefortis, and so he wouldn’t know about this, and even if he did, he wouldn’t tell Aubrey anyway, but Aubrey has always known regardless. It was instinctive, this sort of knowledge, his mother telling him about being forced to jump in the lake and what if there’ll be leeches, both of them pretending that she was exaggerating.

“This is stupid,” Easy says, purposefully loud. “What, will you force us?”

Gordon inclines his head Easy’s way.

“Why, of course we will,” he says simply. “What did you think?”

“Shush,” Kipp hisses as Easy frowns and opens his mouth. “This is how it works and arguing won’t help.”

“December—”

“They will make hell out of your life here, one way or another, if you start rebelling now,” Kipp cuts him off. “Trust me, Easy-Peasy. My previous school was the same. I know what I’m talking about.”

It’s a cruel sort of kindness, reminding Easy of how he doesn’t belong, a cuckoo’s egg of a boy, but Easy stays quiet and allows it, God knows why.

“I’m not drinking,” Quickly hisses.

“I am,” Jerusalem says, delighted, the madwoman.

“Unsanitary,” Regina whispers.

“ _Unsanitary_?” Quickly screeches. “Downright _deadly_!”

He’s hyperventilating by the time they have them line up, stood in front of Aubrey and shaking like a leaf. None of them have their newsboy caps with them, and it’s strange to see the others without theirs, but it’s strangest on Quickly – his feathery hair too soft-looking, like it should be covered up, protected. He keeps whispering, like a frantic spell.

“I won’t, I won’t, I won’t, I won’t, I won’t—”

Aubrey puts a hand on his shoulder.

“I’ve thought of something,” he tells him, loud enough that Easy, who’s stood before Quickly, turns to him, too. “Swap coats with me.”

“What for?” Quickly says, then shakes his head. “Mine will be too small on you.”

“Yours is too thin,” Aubrey whispers. “If you pretend to swallow, you could pour the water into your sleeve instead of actually drinking it. My coat’s thick enough to hide it.”

Easy tilts his head, thoughtful.

“Oh. Well, yes, but mine is too small for you and it’ll be suspicious if you don’t wear a coat, and—”

“Swap with me, then,” Easy tells Quickly but watches Aubrey instead. “Mine’s fine, too, isn’t it?”

It is. His coat is the one Lavinia got him last year, thick and expensive, the sort that lasts a few seasons.

“Vodka, too,” Easy says, hastily taking it off. “Can you hear? Vodka, after, _Christ_.”

“Be subtle,” Aubrey tells Quickly, helping him into Easy’s coat, because he’s shaking so badly that his arm misses the sleeve three times. “They’ll watch.”

“So these are the famous rich-boy pastimes,” Easy mutters, buttoning up Quickly’s grey coat. He looks miserable in it even in the dark, dulled to something sad, but he grins, almost wolfish.

“Don’t hate it too much,” Aubrey tells him, resigned. “We still have three years of this ahead of us.”

“Isn’t it hereditary?” Easy says. “Once you’re a fourth or a fifth-year, you get to bully, etc.?”

It sounds self-aware, of course. Easy is in no way a rich boy and he will never get to hold a torch and make half-speeches about how letting oneself be pushed around is the reasonable thing to do because tradition.

“Secret clique nonsense,” Quickly hisses, almost vicious. He’s still shaking. “You shouldn’t drink it _either_. What if you _die_.”

Then he goes quiet – three people and it’s his turn.

“Here’s to hoping it’ll work,” Easy whispers, watching. Quickly’s hands shake and shake and shake as he crouches by the water and fills the mug, but it does look like he’s really drinking, in the dark. He even remembers to fake swallowing.

He downs the vodka Teddy Willow hands him after too, only that’s not pretend, because he coughs after.

“And if I refuse to?” Easy says, challenging, once it’s his turn. He glares at Teddy and refuses to take the mug from him.

“You _don’t_ refuse to,” Teddy says with a shrug. “It’s a rite of passage.”

“And if I refuse to?” Easy repeats pointedly, and mirrors Teddy’s shrug. Aubrey can see half of his grin, and almost folds a hand over his mouth to keep him from speaking. “Try and find another kid who’ll look enough like Jerusalem’s brother. I’ll watch and laugh.”

Of course, Teddy won’t. Near everyone else in their year looks painfully English, and good luck finding another boy of Easy’s posture with black curls. _My grandmother is from Turkey_ , December told them proudly once, _and I have her hair._

“You misunderstand,” Gordon says calmly. “You don’t drink, we force you.”

Easy’s grin widens, and Aubrey, still not a believer, thinks a quick prayer.

“Oh?” Easy says, almost delighted in his indignation. “Go on, then. _Force_ me.”

They do, of course. Christopher and Gordon grab Easy by the arm each, and he trashes and trashes, but it doesn’t do much. Aubrey is suddenly reminded of how small Easy is, and wonders at how he’s forgotten.

Teddy sighs, exasperated, and approaches with the mug already filled.

“Do calm down,” he says tiredly. “Consider swallowing. I wouldn’t want you to choke to death, not before _Twelfth Night_.”

“I _hate_ you,” Easy says, and spits. It misses Teddy by an inch.

Gordon stretches his mouth open and Teddy pours the lake water down Easy’s throat. Easy gurgles and splutters, but swallows most of it.

When they let go of him, he doesn’t wait to be handed the glass of vodka, but reaches for it himself, and downs it in quick gulps, angrily. He glares at them after, a there, happy now? of a sort.

Aubrey obediently fills up the mug and stares into the muddy water. This, he will never tell his mother about.

He drinks fast, to get it over with, and after, the burning alcohol is almost welcome.

“It wasn’t that bad, was it?” Jerusalem says merrily once he joins their huddle. “A bit earthy, sure, but so’s coffee, and people drink it without complaints.”

“I am going to put earthworms in all of Willow’s shoes,” Easy growls.

“It would have been more pleasant if you hadn’t argued,” Regina points out, not exactly chiding. “I think it’s fairly clean, anyway, as lakes go.”

“ _Clean?_ ” Quickly screeches. “I think _there’s a tadpole in my sleeve_. This isn’t _right_.”

“I say it was better than coffee,” Kipp says lightly.

“You’re all going to die, and I’m going to stay without friends,” Quickly laments. “Who’s going to be in their play once you all drop dead from food poisoning?”

Aubrey shakes his head, wipes his mouth, and crosses a few patches of grass to stand next to Frankie Stewart.

“You don’t seem to be enjoying the spectacle,” he says, watching her watch the queue of petrified kids.

“I don’t,” Frankie admits. “I’ve made up my mind to not speak a word to Teddy for a week after this.”

Aubrey smiles.

“How come you’re here then?”

Frankie thinks about it for a moment, then sighs.

“He means well,” she says, and smiles wryly, as if she realises how ridiculous it sounds. “It’s something he often says, how if you say no to how things are, things will go on unchanged, only without you. This way, he can… supervise.”

Aubrey thinks of Teddy pouring the lake water down Easy’s throat.

“You call that supervision?” he says softly.

“It could be someone worse,” Frankie sighs. “It _would_ be someone worse, and the night’s not over yet.”

“Hmm. I can’t wait.”

Frankie smiles.

“Do you remember how I told you that Teddy wanted Jerusalem to convince him _Twelfth Night_ would be better than _Midsummer_?”

Aubrey nods.

“He’s all for changing the world, Teddy, only he thinks some things are worth the effort, and some simply won’t be changed. She had to make _Twelfth Night_ worth it, Jerusalem. This – Teddy thinks this isn’t.”

Aubrey doesn’t know what _Twelfth Night_ has to do with changing the world, but he has the feeling that soon, he’ll find out.

“You disagree with him,” he guesses.

“To an extent, yes, hence the not talking to him plan. But, as I said, he means well.”

Aubrey believes her, but it only lasts half an hour, because once they’re back on the school grounds, everyone gets handed a pink Wellington and a shoelace, and Teddy produces the now-familiar copy of _The Night Climbers of Cambridge._

“Oh no,” Aubrey whines, and Easy arches an eyebrow at him. When Aubrey fails to explain, he starts tugging on his sleeve, but Aubrey doesn’t know what to say. ‘You’ll hate this’ seems like a safe bet, but Aubrey would rather spare Easy the news for a few more minutes, and so, Easy keeps tugging on Aubrey’s sleeve, almost automatic, and under the sickness-yellow moon, Teddy Willow tells his tale.

“Imagine you’re a student and you’ve stayed out too late. You’re supposed to be back at your college by 10 pm, unless you’ve been granted a late pass, which you haven’t, because they’ll let you have one only so many times. Nothing left to do but climb over the gate, unless you fancy a night out on a bench somewhere, but who would? Only ah-ah, the university’s had enough, and what’s that? Are those _spikes_ on top of the gate? Those sure weren’t there before! It’s a message, loud and clear, but now, you’re no chicken, are you? So you don’t stop staying out late, and you don’t sleep on a park bench – no. Instead, you make it a challenge and so the art of night climbing is born.”

“Oh, I see where this is going,” Kipp says, amused.

“I don’t!” Quickly mumbles, panicked. “And I don’t want to!”

“But of course, appetite comes with eating, and soon, climbing over gates is not enough. They tempt you every day, the walls, the towers, the spires – and oh, how they tempt at night!”

They pass around photos – buckets, umbrellas, and whatnot up on university roofs, glorious and mocking.

A car, too, the biggest mockery of all.

“Most of us are going to end up at those universities anyhow, and I don’t know about you, but I sure don’t intend to respect any curfews!” Teddy says after listing off several anecdotes about the famed night climbers. “And besides, what better way to deal with stage fright than to have you go through something much scarier than a school play?”

At Aubrey’s side, Easy tenses.

“Attach the Wellington to your person wherever you prefer it, though the back is recommended, and climb on,” Christopher says with a sharp grin. “I want a nice pink row of them up on the roof for December Graham to wonder about in the morning.”

“You’re not serious,” Lavinia protests. “We’ll _die_.”

“You won’t,” Gordon assures, frowning at the Wilgefortis walls. They’re out the back, where the building is its most mismatched, parts added to it asymmetrically over the years, old stone, new stone. There are smaller roofs not that far from the ground, and many footholds.

“Someone will fall,” Lavinia says, stubborn.

“No one’s ever fallen,” Christopher laughs. “It’s not a prison wall. Look, there’s a windowsill or a smaller roof every three feet.”

“You’ve been getting away with this for how long?”

“Wilgefortis is fairly new, isn’t it? But I assume from the very beginning. It’s a tradition.”

“No Wellingtons before,” Aubrey dares say. He researched Wilgefortis like nothing before or after when applying, and he would have stumbled across something like this.

“No,” Teddy admits. “That’s our original idea.”

“He likes dramatics,” Frankie explains.

“Don’t we know it,” Kipp laughs.

“And if I scream?” Easy says. He’s frozen at Aubrey’s side, fingers curled around the hem of his sleeve but no tugging.

“Then there’ll be a toilet to drink from instead of a lake,” Gordon tells him in a monotone voice, “and we won’t be half as nice about it.”

“Anyway, who wants to go first?” Christopher prompts. “Besides Teddy, of course. He’ll demonstrate.”

A hand shoots up and Aubrey double-takes when he sees that it belongs to Treasure Little, of all people.

He would have expected it from Jerusalem, and sure enough, her hand shoots up, too, but—

“ _No_ ,” Quickly whines. “What is she _doing_?”

“Better go and kiss her good luck while you still have the chance, Quick,” Kipp tells him, nudging him with his elbow. “She might be no more than a Bolognese-style puddle on the ground soon.”

For a moment, Aubrey expects Quickly to hit Kipp, but of course, he doesn’t.

“And if I sneak out and get December Graham?” Quickly wonders, frowning as Treasure steps out from the crowd.

Aubrey shakes his head.

“They _will_ make our life a living hell,” he tells him gently. “It’s how cats always land on their feet.”

“What, bullies do, too?” Kipp guesses.

“Mmm.”

“Well!” Kipp says merrily. “Let’s hope so do theatre kids, then!”

“She doesn’t even look scared,” Regina says, watching Treasure listen to Teddy’s hushed advice, a pink Wellington already tied to her back. 

“She always looks scared, doesn’t she?” Kipp comments, watching her as well. “Save for now.”

“I can’t look,” Quickly whispers as Treasure starts testing the wall, but watches anyway, through his fingers but without blinking.

“Better do,” Regina advises. “It’ll be you soon.”

“Are you okay with this?” Kipp asks her, and she only shrugs in reply. Regina, Aubrey knows, is adaptive. He bets she is okay with climbing the roof indeed, only less okay with the rest of them being forced to do so too. She watches Treasure in silence, rubbing soothing circles into Quickly’s back.

“This is amazing,” Jerusalem says, gleeful. “If only we had fancy swords and capes!”

“ _We could die_ ,” Quickly hisses.

“Yeah, yeah, you said,” Jerusalem says, dismissive. “Carpe diem, and all that!”

“Carpe noche, more like,” Kipp says.

“That’s Spanish, not Latin,” Aubrey corrects automatically.

“But it sounds nice, doesn’t it?”

“I’m going,” Jerusalem announces, eyes sparkling. “See you losers up there!”

With that, she skips away. Soon, a reluctant queue forms, and Aubrey keeps hoping for a deus ex machina of some sort as it slowly moves forward, December Graham with a candle in hand rounding a corner, or maybe police sirens going off nearby.

Of course, it never comes.

Somehow, Treasure gets to the roof after Teddy, quick and skillful, and when she gets there, everyone save Quickly breathes a sigh of relief.

“She’ll still have to get down,” he says mournfully.

Once it’s Jerusalem’s turn, they all hold their breath. Lower roofs or not, she’s impatient, hurrying up without testing each foothold, and it’s a small miracle that she only slips once, clinging to ivy. By the time Quickly’s done throwing up in his Wellington from nerves, Teddy Willow has already helped her to the roof.

“Better empty that,” Kipp advises, staring into the Wellington. “Stinks like vodka and fish.”

They had trout for dinner.

“This is very surreal, isn’t it?” Kipp says once Quickly shakes the Wellington over the ground. “Remember, I want to be cremated.”

He skips the queue and starts climbing, catlike.

“This one won’t fall,” Regina assures, but Quickly shakes like a leaf anyway.

“Do you miss the orphanage?” he asks Easy, clinging to his arm.

Easy watches Kipp climb, white as a sheet, but shakes his head.

“Don’t be stupid,” he says. “I’d rather die here than live there.”

Dramatic as the words are, he sounds painfully matter-of-fact. Still, Aubrey’s not sure if he believes him.

When Lavinia stops talking about courts and police cells and guillotines, Christopher calmly advises her to take off the scarf Regina knitted for her off before starting the climb.

“It’ll catch on something, and then what?” he says, shaking his head.

“And then _sod off_ ,” Lavinia snaps, chin up, and keeps the scarf on. When she starts climbing, Regina watches and doesn’t blink.

“You’re going, too,” Gordon tells Jonathan Small, amused, as Jonathan Small takes a swig from the bottle of vodka the former is still carrying around. “Don’t think you’re not.”

“I know, mate, I know,” Jonathan says with a theatrical grin. His hands are shaking, but the smile doesn’t waver. Aubrey knows that he’ll pretend not to mind all of this to the very end, because it’s the only way for his ego to survive the bullying – pretending that he’s not being bullied in the first place.

When it’s Quickly’s turn, he faints.

“Oh, _Christ_ ,” Christopher groans, slapping his cheeks and failing to revive him. “ _Fine_. This one stays.”

“Shouldn’t he go to the infirmary?” Regina questions, rearranging Quickly’s limbs into something contained.

“He’s breathing,” Christopher says with a lazy shrug.

“You could pretend to faint, too,” Regina whispers in Easy’s ear, just loud enough for Aubrey to catch it.

Easy shakes his head.

“They won’t buy it.”

He’s right.

Regina hesitates before stepping forward.

“Don’t look down,” she whispers eventually, and then starts climbing, Gordon still mumbling something about never reaching for anything with both hands at once.

“Easy,” Aubrey says, stuffing his hands in his pockets so Easy won’t see how much they’re shaking. “Remember about— Dora Maar.”

After that first time they climbed over the school walls last year, Jerusalem dragged them outside the school grounds a few more times, until it became almost mundane.

_Trust me?_

_I don’t._

_You will._

After that first time, Easy’s fear of heights remained unmentioned, and Aubrey’s ridiculous gamble – _if you fall, you can tear_ Dora Maar au chat _to shreds_ – was never repeated, but they both understood it as in indefinite thing.

Still, Aubrey guesses that Easy might need the reminder.

Easy watches him for a moment, absent-mindedly chewing on his lip.

“Really?” he says at last. “Still?”

Aubrey understands. Not only is Easy more likely to fall now than he was then, but he’s been reminded of Aubrey’s adoration for Dora Maar every night for the past few weeks as well. Each day after everyone has fallen asleep, Aubrey collects Easy and they head to the library, where one of them stays awake and the other sleeps. The only reason why they didn’t go tonight was how they’d all stayed up late and ha, the irony.

(They don’t always switch, at the library. Sometimes, they’re both awake for hours, and Aubrey never regrets staying up late in the morning, no matter how unrested he feels, because there’s nothing like Easy in the middle of the night – gone quiet and thoughtful, saying clever things and listening to Aubrey like everything Aubrey has to say matters. Sometimes, he watches Aubrey, silent and focused, like it’s an activity in its own right, and not boredom, and every now and then, Aubrey will put away his book and watch him back and it’s— It’s.)

“Really,” Aubrey insists. “Still.”

Sometimes, Aubrey forgets that it’s about guarding _Dora Maar au chat_. Sometimes, they head to the library together, socks silent on the ground, and he doesn’t even think about the painting, because by now, it’s just something they do.

Of course, he could never tell Easy _that_ because what reason would they have for continuing to do it then?

“And if I fall and die?” Easy asks, voice shaky and lips twisted in a wry smile. “It’s quite the drop! How will I tear the stupid thing to shreds if I’m in the grave?”

What Aubrey thinks, hopelessly, is, _don’t fall._

What he says is, “Then I promise to tear it to shreds myself.”

Easy blinks at him, surprised, then slowly holds out his hand. Aubrey stares at it stupidly for a moment, uncomprehending, and then shakes it.

It feels intimate rather than formal.

“Next!” Gordon snaps to their left, and right, that’s what this is all about, catering to spoiled boys’ fancy and risking their lives in the name of peer pressure and not— Nothing else.

“Can you go first?” Easy asks him and Aubrey lets go of his hand, long seconds too late.

He doesn’t _want_ to go first. He’d rather watch Easy from below and fool himself into believing that if Easy slipped, he’d have a chance at catching him.

“Alright,” he agrees reluctantly anyway. “Why?”

Easy takes his time answering. He stares up, where Jerusalem is waving at them from the top of the roof, and smiles, something self-deprecating about it. Aubrey’s come to like it when it’s just the two of them and Easy’s less shouty and more openly himself, but not like this. Not like this.

“I suppose I just want you to be there already, waiting, when I get to the top.”

‘When,’ not ‘if,’ and Aubrey breathes out in relief.

“Some liquor for courage, boys?” Christopher offers once they approach, the last of vodka sloshing in the bottle Gordon’s still holding.

Suddenly, Aubrey’s furious. It’s so rare a feeling that for a second he doesn’t recognize it, and, confused, lets it spread.

“That’s too much,” he says, disapproving. “This whole thing is highly irresponsible without adding alcohol to it. What university will want you once your name makes the headline of the article all about how you sent scared kids to their potential deaths, and inebriated, too?”

Gordon clicks his tongue.

“Just offering, Allen,” he says, not-so-subtly reminding Aubrey that he knows who Aubrey is and that it means Aubrey should play nice. “Don’t be a spoilsport.”

Easy reaches for the bottle and Aubrey keeps himself from shaking him by the shoulder, somehow. Christopher grins, but it turns into a grimace when Easy overturns the bottle and lets all the alcohol spill to the grass without taking a sip.

“Thanks,” he says, inhaling deeply and shoving the empty bottle back in Gordon’s hands. “Smells divine.”

Aubrey shakes his head and starts climbing, feeling fondness rather than fear. In the end, it proves much easier than he feared, the ornaments added to the building over the years easy to hold on to, and the low auditorium and gym roofs providing a somewhat false but nonetheless reassuring sense of safety. The finish is the worst, only windowsills and gaps in the wall for support, but it’s only a few feet of that, and soon, he has his hands on the roof’s edge and is hauling himself up. Once there, he unties his Wellington and deposits it, upside down, on top of a protruding stone decoration, adding to an already impressive row of pink.

“AA!” Jerusalem exclaims, delighted, from where she, Regina, and Lavinia share a blanket. “There’s tea! Your favourite!”

Jerusalem knows nothing about Aubrey’s favourite tea, but he accepts a cup from Teddy Willow and thanks him, too, daydreaming about pushing him off the roof instead only a little.

He doesn’t want to watch, but he leans over the edge anyway. He thinks it might be what Easy wants – to see a familiar face, a landmark of a sort.

Easy is quick, already up on the auditorium roof and refusing to hesitate. Once he’s up on one of the windowsills, Aubrey tries a reassuring smile, even though he’s actually hyperventilating, mouthing Hail Marys to himself when Easy’s not looking.

He didn’t think he remembered any real prayers.

“Don’t look down,” he advises once Easy is only a couple of feet below, and of course, Easy does just that. “Oh, come now.”

“ _Jesus_ ,” Easy hisses. “If I fall, you better cut Dora Maar to pieces so small no one will ever put the old bat back together.”

“She wasn’t old when he painted her,” Aubrey corrects, affronted. “Not at all.”

Easy climbs to the highest windowsill and freezes.

“I can’t,” he says, a broken sound. “I won’t reach.”

“I’ll help you,” Aubrey says, his arms already stretched towards him.

“ _No_ ,” Easy protests. “Then we’ll both fall, and who’ll destroy the painting then? You can’t— You’ve read too many books to fall.”

“What does that even mean?” Aubrey mumbles, his heart knocking against the surface of the roof where he’s lain down on his stomach. “There’s chocolate up here.”

Easy perks up at that and Aubrey kneels, preparing himself for hauling him up.

“Really?”

Aubrey glances over his shoulder and stares at Teddy, who’s chewing on a chocolate Easter bunny. Teddy freezes and wraps the half-eaten thing in tissue paper with a sheepish smile.

“ _Really_.”

Easy takes a deep breath and slides his hands into Aubrey’s. Aubrey tugs, as hard as he can, and Easy pushes himself upwards with one foot on the window’s handle. He tumbles into Aubrey and they both topple backwards, sprawled on the roof, old rainwater soaking Aubrey’s coat.

Easy is on top of him, their limbs almost aligned, his breath hot in the crook of Aubrey’s neck, and Aubrey expects him to scramble away and start complaining any minute now, but Easy stays put, shaking and breathing heavily, but otherwise motionless.

“Easy?” Aubrey tries quietly, confused.

Silence.

“Hey, are you alright?” Aubrey prods, staring up at the quilt of stars spread above. Suddenly, he can’t remember any constellations, unless all the places Easy is touching him, shaking and warm, are a reflected pattern. “Ezra?”

At that, Easy lets out a choked sob, and Aubrey’s heart doesn’t break – no, what happens to it is much worse. He feels it clench in his chest, like a fist, and for a moment, it seems like it will never, ever relax.

Easy heaves a breath, half inhale half another sob, and Aubrey can’t stand how much he’s shaking. He knows that it’s not from cold, he _knows_ , but cold is the only thing he can logistically deal with, and so he gathers the sides of his coat and adjusts it around Easy, Easy just small enough to fit inside. He has to keep his arms there, across Easy’s back, to keep the coat in place, and it’s almost an embrace.

Aubrey’s not used to touch, and almost can’t stand it. Stay, he thinks, then, go. Stay, go, stay, go, stay, go.

It _hurts_.

“You did well,” he says, just to say something. “You were up faster than me.”

Easy makes the same choked sound.

“I am never ever _ever_ climbing a roof again,” he mumbles wetly, almost against Aubrey’s skin. His hair, all up in Aubrey’s face, smells like rain, and soap, and the night itself, a fresh scent.

“You don’t have to,” Aubrey tells him. “It’s alright. It’s over.”

“We still have to get down,” Easy mumbles hopelessly.

“Actually, you don’t!” Teddy Willow pipes in. Easy goes very still, and then slowly sits up, supporting himself with his hands on Aubrey’s chest. He glares at Teddy.

“ _Excuse me?_ ”

“There’s an entrance to the roof right there,” Teddy says, pointing to the left. “Didn’t you know?”

“You better use that entrance now, Teddy, before he shoves you off the edge,” Jerusalem calls, correctly interpreting the fire in Easy’s eyes.

“Right,” Teddy says, uneasy, and then produces the half-eaten bunny. “Chocolate?”

Easy sighs, and collapses on top of Aubrey again.

“I hate everybody,” he grumbles, then makes himself comfortable as if Aubrey is but a mattress.

Aubrey doesn’t dare breathe.

“Where’s Quickly?” Treasure asks from where she’s sharing a blanket with Kipp. “Is he still to climb?”

“He was unwell,” Kipp tells her, amused. “I’ll let him know you worried.”

“Of course I worry,” Treasure says, confused. “I’ve seen him at the gym monkey bars.”

Kipp laughs and Aubrey makes a note to plead with him to never tell Quickly _that_.

“Anyway!” Teddy says once everyone has climbed up. “Since it’s Halloween…”

“Ghost stories!” Jerusalem guesses.

Easy sighs and chews on the chocolate bunny. He stays sprawled on top of Aubrey the whole night.

*

In the morning, Regina approaches Jonathan Small with an indifferent expression.

“I need your measurements,” she announces.

Jonathan looks up from his scrambled eggs, and, because all his stupid friends are there, grins oafishly.

“Oh, do you now?” he drawls. “Twelve inches.”

Regina blinks at him, unimpressed, as his friends howl with laughter.

“That can’t be healthy,” Regina tells him once they’ve calmed down, and stares down with a worried frown, presumably at his crotch. “You should see a doctor about it, I think. Now, I meant all the other measurements, for the Orsino costume.”

Jonathan stares at her blankly.

“ _Twelfth Night_?” Regina supplies. “I hardly need that specific measurement, you understand, though if it is so outside the norm, I might need to add some extra fabric to the trousers to accommodate it… I do have some polka dots leftover scraps somewhere, I think.”

Jonathan glares. Regina smiles politely.

“So?” she prompts once he’s opened and closed his mouth a few times.

“I’ll let you know,” he mumbles, and Regina returns to their side of the table, clearly satisfied.

“Do you still maintain that this will work?” Jerusalem asks her, doubtful. She hands Regina an already buttered toast.

“Que sera sera,” Regina says diplomatically and takes a sip of cocoa. It leaves a moustache.

“We should tell December about yesterday,” Quickly says, pushing his untouched plate away. “What’s the point in Wilgefortis not being like all the other schools if it’s _exactly like all the other schools_?”

“No use crying over spilt milk,” Kipp says joyfully.

“The last time you spilled your hot chocolate, you whined about it for three days,” Easy points out from where he’s sitting pressed up against Aubrey, arms folded atop Aubrey’s shoulder, because apparently they do that now.

Aubrey hasn’t said a word since breakfast started, but he doesn’t think anyone noticed, so it’s all good.

“May I remind you that you’re the only one who didn’t have to risk breaking his neck yesterday?” Kipp tells Quickly, stealing some of his egg with one hand and reaching across Aubrey to flick Easy’s nose, ever the multitasker.

“Me losing consciousness was hardly a good thing,” Quickly grumbles, “since I couldn’t administer vomit-provoking substances to all of you.”

“Why would you?” Jerusalem says, horrified. “Wasn’t your own puke enough for one day?”

“You drank _lake water_ ,” Quickly says, slow and loud, as if Jerusalem’s hard of hearing. “God knows what’s hatching in your intestines _as we speak_.”

“I have the feeling that you’re going to grow up to be conspiracy theorist,” Jerusalem tells him, shaking her head.

“A few more nights like this, and I won’t get to grow up at all!”

December Graham enters the room just then, and everyone instantly stops talking. She’s wearing flat shoes, but in the sudden silence, her steps echo anyway.

“Good morning,” she says once she’s crossed the room. “I must say I love the new decorations!”

Outside, at the back of the school, the merry row of pink Wellingtons looks spectacular.

“I’m going to keep them there, I think,” December continues. “They add character, don’t they? That said, the lock’s been changed, so you won’t be able to access the roof anymore. This one’s sturdy, too, so I doubt hairpins will work.”

“She thinks someone used the door?” Jerusalem whispers, grinning. Kipp, who is, as always, watching December intently, shakes his head and puts a finger to his lips.

“And if I learn that the roof’s been accessed any other way,” December says, smiling cheerfully, “There _will_ be consequences.”

She doesn’t name said consequences, only starts calmly eating her breakfast, which makes it all the more threatening.

Kipp smiles, content.

“Well,” Jerusalem says, poking her eggs with a fork. “I myself regret nothing!”

“Where’s Teddy anyway?” Quickly says, looking around the dining hall. “Shouldn’t he be here, gloating?”

Aubrey remembers Frankie Stewart telling him that Teddy meant well, but doesn’t mention it.

“I meant what I said,” Easy says lightly, curls tickling Aubrey’s cheek. His smile is downright malicious. “He’s probably cleaning earthworms out of his shoes at the moment.”

Aubrey shakes his head but can’t help smiling. By the time he’s finished eating, he’s almost used to Easy’s weight.

(He doesn’t want to get used to it, because then what will he do once it disappears?)

“Anyway, Francis, one day you’ll look back on this and laugh,” Kipp tells Quickly once they get up from the table, slinging an arm across his shoulders.

“No,” Quickly says, grim. “One day, I’ll look back on this, and have my children home-schooled.”

“Quickly?” someone says in a thin voice. It proves to be Treasure Little, hair up in a severe ponytail. “Hello. I heard you were unwell.”

Quickly gapes at her like she’s an apparition.

“Er,” he says, eloquently.

“You didn’t even eat your breakfast,” Treasure says, staring critically at Quickly’s full plate over his shoulder. “Here.”

She presses something into his hand, and he fumbles, almost dropping the small bag.

“Herbs,” Treasure explains with a lovely smile. Ghostly pale and knobby-kneed as she is, she suddenly seems beautiful. “For your stomach.”

“I say he’ll faint again any minute now,” Kipp whispers, stifling laughter.

“Thank you,” Quickly says, very slowly.

“It’s not poison,” Treasure blurts out, blushing red. “I promise.”

“I k-know,” Quickly assures. “Please don’t climb buildings again?” he adds in a weak voice, then blushes to the roots of his hair.

Treasure smiles.

“I make no promises,” she says, then walks off.

“I’m allergic to this level of socially awkward,” Jerusalem says, wrinkling her nose. “I need a shower.”

“I need one too,” Easy says, frowning in distaste. “From all the _politeness_.”

“Truly disgusting,” Kipp agrees. “Even more so than Jonathan Small’s 12-inch penis.”

“Well, try to be understanding,” Regina tells him maturely. “With a surname like that?”

Quickly stares at the packet of herbs in his hand and smiles. Somehow, Aubrey suspects that instead of drinking them, he’ll keep them.

*

“Oh, save it,” Teddy Willow groans when Aubrey approaches him after a rehearsal. “I have a younger… younger siblings. I know that letting kids climb buildings is dangerous, so spare me.”

“I didn’t even say anything yet,” Aubrey says, amused.

“You have very talkative eyes,” Teddy grumbles, crumpling the script page he was reading. “You’ve no right to judge me. You say hello to all the important people.”

Aubrey stares at him.

“I know, I know, not the same thing,” Teddy says tiredly. “No one died!”

Aubrey arches an eyebrow.

“Once you get over the paralysing shyness,” Teddy tells him, staring at him in wonder, “you’ll be terrifying.”

“I actually wanted to discuss act V with you,” Aubrey says and, as Teddy scowls, he allows himself one indulgent smile.

*

The touching keeps happening, Easy leaning against him whenever he’s tired, stretching his legs across Aubrey’s on the couch, and, on one memorable occasion, falling asleep on top of him in the library, just after two o’clock.

Aubrey never does get used to it, and thank God, because, on his more pessimistic days, he thinks that it’s the only thing that will save him once it all—

Well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually spent much more time than someone who has studying to do should researching the enigmatic night climbers of Cambridge (and not only Cambridge!) and it's really fascinating! All secret societies and hard to get books written under strange pseudonyms (Whipplesnaith!) and pranks. Anyway, the whole thing with kids forcing other kids to do it is obviously made up, so perhaps I'm doing the practice a disservice writing about it in this context but whatever. The things I've heard they actually do force kids to do at boarding schools are maybe worse than that so... Anyway, reading about it was fun but I can't just fangirl over weird student antics for the whole chapter so, in the end, I pretty much only used bits from this article: **https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/history/cambridge-university-alpine-society-parkour-13942794** , which is shortish and full of all the good stuff. 
> 
> Also, can one even write a slow-burn romance without one character ending up sprawled on top of another and not instantly moving away? 
> 
> Btw, it might not look like it, but we're technically halfway through year 2 in terms of wordcount! I'm actually sticking to my schedule so it might not even be a lie :,)


	6. the geometry of a circle -- interlude, spring 2006

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> will it ever go away?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I still can't believe that the last chapter was 9k words of kids being bullied into climbing buildings. I swear, I'm sober when I write this story, only my idea of 'realistic' is at 'a series of unfortunate events' level so... 
> 
> Anyway, here's Sparrow being angsty as always. This story is going to be so sad, guys :,) (and then I'll fix it and it'll be happy!!!)

Pablo Picasso, _Young Acrobat on a Ball_

*

A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river

but then he’s still left

with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away

but then he’s still left with his hands

~Richard Siken, _Boot Theory_

*

It’s relatively easy, getting Maureen Barkley to like him. He compliments her collection, compliments her house, compliments her perfume—

He doesn’t make the mistake of thinking her stupid or naïve. He knows that she can see right through the exaggerated charm. The trick is in convincing her that what’s beneath said charm is the truth, and not just another of the many layers of bullshit.

The charm is a practiced thing. Sparrow has faked it before, but he always checks his smile in the mirror before leaving to meet her anyway, to Lei’s delight.

“I just think it’s hilarious,” Lei said the first time he saw him do it. “No, no, don’t worry, it’s convincing, I’m sure, if someone doesn’t actually _know_ you.”

Har, har, Sparrow never smiles, truly hilarious.

“Consider dropping the tie,” Lei advised next, and Sparrow ignored the wave of disgust that spread somewhere inside a stomach, a storm of a feeling that he’d had years to learn to live with.

Now, he eats an olive off a toothpick even though he hates olives – always has – and flashes Maureen Barkley a brilliant smile.

“It’s kind of you,” he tells her, trying to will his voice soft. “Organising all this.”

He makes a sweeping gesture and stares out the nearest window because, just then, he can’t stand looking at anything else. Maureen’s house is a study in excess, dripping gold like a forgotten corner of the Palace of Versailles. He hates it, and not just for the wastefulness of it. What he can’t stand the most is how much the ornaments, and the china, and the flowers distract from the very reason why everyone’s here – the expensive paintings up on every wall.

‘Everyone,’ of course, does not really mean everyone. It only means rich people like Maureen herself who never wear the same suit twice and who don’t drink wine if it’s not older than them.

“Well, I think it’s incredibly important,” Maureen says, intellectual, “for art to always be accessible to the masses.”

Sparrow presses the nail of his thumb into the tip of his forefinger, a socially acceptable substitute for curling his hand into a fist.

For Maureen, ‘always’ clearly means twice a year, and ‘the masses’ must mean all her rich acquaintances who learned how to say ‘fish fork’ before they learned how to say ‘pee.’

“You’re ahead of your time,” Sparrow tells her, tilting his head her way with a gracious smile. “Not everyone likes sharing.”

Maureen Barkley doesn’t share, not really. If she did, Sparrow wouldn’t have to stand at her side the whole evening, and January wouldn’t have to have him try to convince her he’d love nothing more than to sleep with her in order to learn something about a painting or two.

(Sometimes, he thinks that this is a test rather than a necessity, and writes January’s name on the loose bricks behind the building where he and Lei live in marker, then throws them at the wall).

“You wouldn’t believe,” Maureen sighs, and Sparrow almost reconsiders. Maybe she _is_ naïve, except— No. Hypocrisy is a different sort of blindness. “Say, would you accompany me to the balcony? I’m craving a cigarette.”

Seeing as it’s her house, she could have one right here, and it’s not like he hasn’t seen her going through them in the rooms before, but if she wants to get him alone, it’s in Sparrow’s best interest to go along with it.

Outside, the air is almost unbearably cold. It’s only March, and much colder than Sparrow remembers February, even though the grass is already the kind of green that doesn’t make him think of death.

“Why so quiet?” Maureen asks and forgets her cigarette. Sloppy, sloppy, but she can get away with it. She could get away with anything.

Sparrow makes sure to look lovestruck, and dreads the end of the evening, when his face will hurt from all the fake smiling.

She’s close, inches away, and Sparrow wets his lips and cites Shakespeare at her in a low voice.

It’s too late for her to think him shy, but maybe if he quotes Romeo and speaks about profaning her with his unworthy hands, she’ll think him humble at least.

 _You don’t actually have to do it_ , January said. _You only need to make her think you_ want _to._

Of course, Sparrow is a hypocrite just like her. All this, after all, is so he too can have a painting all to himself.

He makes sure to let his gaze linger on Maureen’s lips, and tries to remember the name of the shade of her lipstick. Imperial red, he thinks, and almost laughs, because oh, how it fits.

“Where has January been hiding you?” Maureen says, more fond than Sparrow would expect of her, and it occurs to him that she has a rather lovely face. He wonders, absently, how many people have painted her.

“I’ve been hiding myself,” he tells her, quirking a smile, “and then he found me.”

Half-true, that, because January did find him, but only because Sparrow let him.

Let— the world, really, because if he’s being honest with himself (only when is he ever?) it wasn’t January he was hoping for, all through his reckless hide-and-seek.

In the end, no talk of pilgrims can save him. Maureen hasn’t told him anything yet, but steals a kiss anyway, and the rest is a blur, like impressionist painting taken too far.

When he stumbles home late into the night, Lei calls out as soon as Sparrow pushes the door open, something about how he’s made pancakes and “I’m actually getting good at this, can you believe? Yeah, me neither.”

The words come as if through water, and Sparrow can’t breathe. He thinks there must be a bit of imperial red in the corner of his mouth still because the spot feels dead when he prods it with his tongue, only his tongue feels dead, too, so maybe not.

What it comes down to is that he can’t breathe.

Lei finds him like that, standing next to the door and hyperventilating, staring at nothing because no matter where he directs his gaze, his eyes don’t catch on anything, blind to everything that dares exist.

“Hey,” Lei says, hands fluttering but no touch. “Hey, how can I— What do I…?”

“Water,” Sparrow chokes out. “Cold.”

He doesn’t know how Lei understands it exactly like Sparrow means it, but he does. He leads Sparrow to their tiny excuse for a bathroom by the elbow, the contact on the edge of bearable through Sparrow’s coat, fumbles with the tap, and pushes Sparrow’s head down, pressing his hand to the back of Sparrow’s neck.

The water soaks him and keeps running, but Sparrow’s breathing only evens out once Lei’s fingers clumsily card through his hair.

They’re not right, Lei’s fingers, but it’s almost enough if Sparrow pretends, and so he pretends and pretends and pretends himself away.

*

“You promised me my painting,” Sparrow growls when he meets January next. “It doesn’t seem to me like you’re looking for it.”

“I _am_ looking,” January assures him, amused. Sparrow dreams of knocking his teeth out, fantasizes about clogged blood. “These things take time.”

A list of things that Sparrow knows take time:

living

dying

rubbing lipstick off one’s lips

remembering

forgetting.

“I need proof,” Sparrow says, and shoves his hands in his pockets in order to keep himself from trying to strangle January. He’d give it a shot, only he’s quite sure that he wouldn’t succeed. “I need proof that you’re looking.”

January smiles, and Sparrow thinks of snakes eating their own tails. Maybe it’s not always about the endlessness of circles. Maybe it’s about how circles are circles are traps.

“I thought you might,” January says, the smug bastard. “Which is why I got you a little something.”

Sparrow raises an eyebrow and tries to ignore how inside his veins, his blood is boiling. He thinks he prefers the days when it feels like he doesn’t have blood running through him at all.

“One moment,” January says and gets up to unlock a drawer in his desk. He retrieves a slim package and carefully hands it over.

Sparrow weights it in his hands, and finds it heavier then he’d expected. He unpacks it slowly, no greed, and all of his curiosity kept at bay.

“I don’t understand,” he says once he’s done, staring at the mirror frame. It’s made out of amber, roses carved all over.

“Lucjan Myrta,” January says as if that explains it. “1997.”

Sparrow can’t help a flinch. 1997, the year before everything good and everything bad.

“Right,” he says. “And you stole this for me why?”

“An advance payment, if you will.”

Sparrow almost says ‘no, I won’t.’

“A frame, for when I find your painting.”

Sparrow stares, disbelieving.

“This,” he says, pointing at the frame, “Is far too small for the painting.”

“Details, details,” January says, dismissive. “You’ll just trim the thing and it’ll be perfect.”

“‘The thing’ is _twice as big_.”

“Like I said,” January drawls, Sparrow right in the middle of the unbreakable shape of how he’s but a puppet now. “You’ll trim it.”

Sparrow ends up nodding because he knows one thing for sure: once he gets his hands on the painting, he’ll be gone, and this time, he won’t let himself be found.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and here's [the frame](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oL9P93ki-lMxBtm4Jgmfwhu1gFc9JCGr/view?usp=sharing) January gives Sparrow


	7. dayclimbing, november 1999

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> of unlikely meetings and hiding spots

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is pretty so-so and half of it is about Aubrey and Treasure being bros, because they were always meant to be, but! dramatic things are coming and soon

(attributed to) Nicolaes Piemont, _Dolls-house Ceiling-Painting of a Cloudy Sky with Birds_

*

Maybe the rain is “sweet” because it falls

through so much of the world.

~Ocean Vuong, _Notebook Fragments_

*

Easy comes to him after dinner, socks and no shoes, toes curling and uncurling on the carpet as he fumbles with something.

“I made you tea,” he tells Aubrey, which is, well, surprising to say the least.

“Yes?” Aubrey says, confused. “Thank you.”

“No, I mean—” Easy stammers, frustrated, then produces something hand-sized, purple and blue. “Here.”

Aubrey adjusts his glasses and stares at the set of nesting dolls December Graham got Easy weeks before.

“…Yes?”

“I need you to hide it for me,” Easy explains. “Somewhere no one will _ever_ find it.”

“Ah.”

Aubrey understands – Easy, who can never have anything to himself, giving something away in order to keep it.

For a second, he can’t think of anything sadder than this.

Easy’s shirt is too big on him, sliding off one shoulder, and he looks even smaller than he is, like a kid asking for something shameful. He’s strangely sweet in this: a mug full of tea set next to Aubrey’s textbooks and his hands shaking ever so slightly as he stares at everything but Aubrey.

“Alright, I’ll hide it,” Aubrey promises because, in that moment, Easy deserves nothing less. “Why not hide it yourself, though?”

“I don’t have much luck with these things,” Easy explains, staring at his feet. “And hiding it means hiding it from everyone, myself included.”

“I’ll know where it is, though,” Aubrey points out softly.

“Yes, I know,” Easy says, finally meeting his eyes. “That’s fine.”

Is it? _Is_ it? How can it be?

Easy sighs, grabs Aubrey’s hand by the wrist, and fits the matryoshka inside his palm, curling Aubrey’s fingers around it.

“I promise, then,” Aubrey says, even though Easy doesn’t ask it of him.

*

They’re in the library, nothing but Quickly’s torch for light, and Aubrey’s watching Easy instead of watching _Dora Maar au chat_.

Aubrey has his legs stretched out, and Easy is curled asleep on top of one, cheek pillowed on Aubrey’s thigh. He looks peaceful like that Magritte bird, full of sky, and Aubrey keeps guard, counting his breaths.

When he closes his own eyes, he thinks of heights.

*

They’re outside, him and Easy, behind the school and staring up at the walls they scaled a few weeks before.

“Never again,” Easy says and visibly shudders.

Aubrey nods, thoughtful. In daylight, the climb looks both more terrifying than it did at night, and, somehow, significantly less so.

“You won’t have to, again,” he promises.

Easy tilts his head but doesn’t nod. Aubrey wishes he did and remembers reading _Anne of Green Gables_ , how Anne climbed a roof just to prove a point and fell.

He hopes, for Easy’s sake, that there won’t be any points to prove.

“It looks like more of a challenge during the day, doesn’t it?” Treasure says, appearing quite unexpectedly right behind them. She smiles when they both startle, and Aubrey wonders if she sneaked up on them on purpose, or if the grass muffled her footsteps.

“In a way,” Aubrey agrees.

“It’s so bright that you can really see the distances between one ledge and another,” Treasure says, shielding her eyes as she stares up. “There are already bird droppings on all the Wellingtons.”

“It’s going to rain.”

“That won’t do much though, will it?”

“No, I mean that it’s going to rain, so we should—”

It starts before he can finish the sentence, a cold drop of water hitting the tip of his nose.

“Oh, _Jesus_ ,” Easy groans as it starts pouring right away. “Come on, come on, come on!”

He rushes back towards the corner of the school and then stops so abruptly that Aubrey almost bumps into him.

“What is she _doing_?”

Aubrey glances over his shoulder, and there’s Treasure, calmly standing in the rain and staring up at the roof.

“Oi! Little!” Easy yells, cupping his hands around his mouth. “You’ll catch your death!”

Treasure smiles at that but doesn’t even glance their way.

“ _Christ_ ,” Easy groans, already soaked. “She’ll get pneumonia, and Quickly won’t sleep for a week.”

Just then, there’s a loud sound of thunder.

They glance at each other and then wordlessly walk back to where Treasure is still standing, transfixed, and start dragging her back to the school. At first, she doesn’t seem to notice, limp like a rag doll save for how she keeps craning her neck to stare at that row of dirty Wellingtons.

She only starts cooperating once they round the corner, as if woken up from a trance of some sort, and they all run back inside, shoes squelching with every step.

Once inside, Treasure apologises and promises to ‘take care of the tea.’ Ten minutes later, as Easy is toweling his hair and complaining, his socks left to dry on one of the common room heat radiators, she pushes the door open with her elbow and walks inside, precariously balancing three full mugs and a plate of cookies.

“I could use an extra hand,” she says, thoughtful, and then frowns as Aubrey takes two of them mugs from her. “Oh, yes, thank you, but I meant it in a more long-term way. Like if I had three arms instead of two, see? I imagine that would be useful.”

Once she’s deposited the remaining mug and the plate on a nearby table, she wrings water out of her hair.

“I’m used to rain, you see,” she explains, sheepish. “I don’t mind it that much.”

Aubrey remembers her standing there, and how her mouth was slightly open, as if she was drinking the rain, and not just not minding it, but he doesn’t ask.

“They’re going to amputate my lips,” Easy whines.

“Don’t be so Quickly,” Treasure says with a warm smile. “It was only a few minutes.”

“They are a bit lifeless, your lips,” Aubrey says, concerned. “Blue, almost.”

“Well,” Easy mumbles, then pokes the lower one. “As long as my teeth are fine.”

They end up playing Scrabble, and it’s nicer than Aubrey expects. He lets Easy win, and across from him, Treasure smiles like she knows.

Treasure, Aubrey decides, should smile more. It’s a strange thought because she already does smile often, but, just then, he knows that it’s true.

*

It’s late November when he and Teddy Willows talk about expectations.

“The thing, Aubrey Allen, is that you can’t ever make everyone happy,” Teddy tells him, waving his hand dramatically. He’s holding an uncapped pen, and he almost takes Aubrey’s eye out with it – Aubrey’s saved only because he has his glasses on. “I cater to one person’s tastes, another is sure to hate it.”

Up on the stage, Jerusalem bows to Lavinia-as-Olivia for the fifteenth time, Teddy too picky to decide how low exactly the bow should be. Jerusalem is murderous, and Lavinia gleeful.

“Naturally,” Aubrey says because, after the roof-climbing, he’s past being scared of Teddy. “Is that meant to be a revelation?”

“Sometimes, yes,” Teddy says, unfazed, and gestures for Jerusalem to bow again with a discontented frown. Aubrey estimates that two more minutes of this, and she’ll march off the stage and won’t be back for quite a while. “Say, what does your father want you to do in the future?”

“Law,” Aubrey tells him after a moment’s pause, and can’t help but feel like he already has one leg inside a trap of some sort.

“Right, of course you will,” Teddy says, nodding along. “What about your mother, then? What does _she_ want you to do in the future?”

 _There are precious few ways of being happy in this world_ , Aubrey remembers her saying. _I’d pray for you to discover one, but what’s praying good for?_

“I can’t say,” Aubrey tells Teddy, surprised at how it’s true. “I suppose she’s fine with me going into law.”

He says the last bit without much conviction. His mother doesn’t have much appreciation for his father’s profession, never has.

“Is she, now,” Teddy hums and sighs as Jerusalem refuses to keep bowing and sits, cross-legged, in the middle of the stage. He yells something about a ten-minute break and turns to fully face Aubrey. “Well, what would you do if she wanted you to become a doctor instead?”

“She… doesn’t,” Aubrey says, puzzled.

“Yes, but she could, and then what? You’d have to choose between law and medicine, wouldn’t you? You could never have both. See, one can _never_ have both.”

Too late, Aubrey realises that this can’t possibly be about _Twelfth Night._

“Oh, but it _is_ about _Twelfth Night_ ,” Teddy assures him once he’s said as much. “Just not in the way you think.”

Aubrey doesn’t pry, only watches Teddy in silence.

“There are things my parents expect from me, and there are things I expect from myself,” Teddy says, enigmatic as ever. “The two don’t align.”

“They don’t want you to direct Shakespeare?”

“Oh, they do. They’re very excited for the play, too. Listen, it’s not important. Well, it _is_ , but here’s the thing: I’m considering doing something risky, but I’ll most likely chicken out. In the event that I do, please, for the love of God, don’t ever try and follow in my footsteps.”

Aubrey shakes his head.

“I would never follow in your footsteps,” he tells Teddy truthfully and smiles to soften the words.

Teddy shakes his head and laughs.

“I will remember it even if, one day, I’ll forget everything else, you know,” he says, suddenly grown melancholy. “How this year, it’s not _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_.”

*

The next time Aubrey walks behind the school to stare up at the roof, he’s alone. It’s right before breakfast, and there’s no one in sight.

He remembers Easy climbing and how he was more terrified watching him than he'd been climbing himself.

His hands shake.

He thinks—

Maybe…?

No.

And then he notices it: the row of Wellingtons, squeaky clean, no bird droppings.

He stands still for a moment, thinking of all the ways Easy could have slipped and fallen.

He doesn’t _plan_ to start climbing.

It just happens.

It’s easier during the day, everything visible and no alcohol sloshing in his stomach. It’s harder, too, the risk of someone spotting him out the window in the back of his mind, and the grass sinfully green beneath him, too far away.

He stops halfway up, and does nothing but breathe for a moment. He wonders if once is enough, or if he’ll have to climb up every other day before the walls stop being scary and before he’ll stop imagining it at odd moments: Easy losing his hold on a windowsill, his shoelace catching on something, his fingers slipping.

Maybe Aubrey will have to break his neck in order to stop believing that somehow, somewhere, Easy is still in danger of breaking his.

It takes him longer to get to the top than it did on Halloween: he’s more careful now and doesn’t want to get it over and done with quite as bad.

When he climbs over the edge of the roof at last, he almost falls off it from shock. There, spread starfish-style on her back, is Treasure Little, eyes closed and shoes carelessly kicked off.

“Hello,” she says, cracking one eye open. “That’s unexpected.”

“What are you…? The Wellingtons!”

“Hmm? Oh yes, I cleaned them,” Treasure admits easily. “They were starting to look shabby.”

“Did you…? The door…?”

“No,” Treasure says, shaking her head. “I climbed, like you.”

“ _Why_?”

She opens her eyes at that.

“Well, why did you?”

“Because it scares me,” Aubrey admits. “Climbing up here.”

“Oh, I see,” Treasure says, tapping her lip. “Well, _I_ climbed up here because it doesn’t scare me.”

She doesn’t say it the way Jerusalem would, all arrogance and bravado. It’s simply matter-of-fact.

“But what for?” Aubrey asks, still puzzled. He sits down next to her when she pats the spot at her side. “Just to clean the Wellingtons?”

“It’s not a bad reason, but no. I just find it calming, being up here. There’s no risk someone’s going to come up h— Well.”

“I’m sorry, I suppose,” Aubrey volunteers awkwardly. “I can, er—”

“Oh, no, don’t,” Treasure says hurriedly. “You’re not really someone I wouldn’t want places, Aubrey.”

“Thank you, I think.”

She flashes him a brilliant smile.

Aubrey wants to ask her if she doesn’t feel calm in other places, but it’s far too untactful of a thing to say, so he stays quiet, waiting for Treasure to wordlessly let him know that she’s had enough of him.

Of course, being Treasure, she never does.

*

Regina can’t put on her necklace, which is only strange because she doesn’t ever wear necklaces.

By the time she’s dropped it three times, Jonathan Small picks it up for her.

“Do you need help with that?”

Regina doesn’t smile at him but does hold her hair up. Next to Aubrey, Lavinia stares.

“Since when are the two of them on such friendly terms?”

She sounds angry, and Aubrey wonders if she likes Jonathan. Surely not. Lavinia is many things, but she’s not _stupid._

Still, she’s seething, brows almost meeting in the middle and hands curled into fists.

“It’s just a necklace,” Aubrey says, staring at Jonathan’s clumsy hands. It takes him four tries to clasp the necklace, and Aubrey can’t tell if he’s really struggling or simply stalling.

“He sniffed her hair, have you seen?” Lavinia hisses, outraged. “ _Disgusting_.”

“Nothing disgusting about her,” Aubrey scolds quietly.

“Not her, no!” Lavinia snaps, impatient. “Him! Or her, too, I suppose, for letting him!”

Aubrey turns to stare at her.

“Are you _concerned_ about her?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Lavinia mumbles, defensive and flushed red. “I just thought she had more sense, Bloody Mary.”

“You never seemed to think all that highly of her,” Aubrey says carefully.

“I _don’t_ think highly of her,” Lavinia insists. “I just think lowly of _him_.”

With that, she stalks away, and Aubrey’s left alone to watch Jonathan’s fingers linger on the back of Regina’s neck, an awful sight indeed.

He stares, and can’t help but think, _don’t_.

*

They’re in the library again, only this time Easy’s not slumped asleep on top of Aubrey. Instead, he’s curled up into a ball under one of the tables, and earlier, Aubrey only had to deliberate for a minute before risking waking him in order to cover him with his jumper. Easy, who can sleep through the jostling of a train and the screeching of three people at once, is surprisingly easy to wake in silence, with soft sounds.

It’s almost dawn, and Aubrey’s reading George Sand’s autobiography, heavy enough to be used as a weapon, when he hears the sound of—

It sounds like falling pebbles.

Curious, Aubrey gets up to open one of the library windows. They’re not by Dora Maar tonight, courtesy of the George Sand book and the French section of the library, and so the window is easy to reach, not one of the tall, stained-glass ones. He leans out, the cold air stinging his cheeks, and when he glances up, he can just glimpse the bottom of somebody’s shoes before they disappear over the edge of the roof.

He glances at Easy, breathing deeply with his mouth tilted open, drooling on Aubrey’s jumper, and suddenly he can’t quite stand being here with him.

Easy, Aubrey’s known for a while, is the sort of a person who lives in spite of things, as if only to be a contrary thing. He remembers his mother showing him an ant crawling all over her palm when he was small, and _don’t you see Aubrey? It’s so tiny but so complex. It walks, it breathes, it pees, it must be a maze inside, even though it’s this small. If there is a God, he must have been bored, to create something this intricate and put it in a world full of things that can and will crush it._

Aubrey only hesitates for a moment before he climbs the windowsill and surveys the wall for footholds, the dawn spreading behind him like a gaping mouth, gold spilling from the sky. On his way up, he maps all the ways someone could have slipped, and exhales every time he doesn’t.

“Hello again,” Treasure says once he gets to the top. “It’s still unexpected.”

“Tell me about it,” Aubrey mumbles, staring. This time, she has a blanket, a thermos, and a book with her. “Do you keep all this up here? What if it rains?”

“I cover it up with a raincoat before getting back down.”

“Sooner or later, you’re going to get caught.”

“No,” Treasure says, soft but decisive. “I’m too fast and too careful. This is what I was— made for.”

“What?” Aubrey says, incredulous. “Climbing roofs?”

“No, not at all,” Treasure says with a frown, and doesn’t elaborate.

Aubrey sighs, and leaves it be. Treasure, he thinks, seems happier up here than anywhere else. When elsewhere, she stutters, blushes, smiles, and helps people pick up their books when they drop them in the corridor, but up here she just – is.

“The sun is closer, up here,” she tells him when he sits down next to her, cross-legged.

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“Other things are farther away, then.”

He leaves that be, too, and lies down next to her to watch the sky for birds that haven’t been shot yet.

*

At breakfast, Easy keeps sniffling, snot dripping down his chin. Quickly stares, horrified, and Aubrey quietly laments his jumper not having been enough against the cold.

“Here,” he says, squeezing a tissue around Easy’s nose. “Blow.”

Easy does, loud enough to turn heads.

“Does anyone have soap?” Quickly asks in an admirably level voice.

“Hmm, let me just check my pockets,” Kipp says, wry.

“Hey,” Easy says, lowering his voice, and tugs on Aubrey’s sleeve (half of Aubrey’s sleeves are stretched by now, from all the tugging Easy does, but he struggles to mind). “Where did you go in the morning?”

More than anything, he looks confused, and that hits Aubrey more than irritation or even – he thinks – disappointment would.

“I—” he starts, at a loss for words. Truth is unacceptable, but so is lying. “Upstairs.”

Easy arches an eyebrow, and Aubrey shakes his head, pretending that his toast is particularly absorbing.

If he were honest, he’d say:

I was sharing a few square feet of space with a girl who’s too sad for fourteen and too in love with heights for her own good.

If he were honest, he’d say:

Time travel better stay impossible, so no one can ever go back to when you could have fallen.

If he were honest, he’d say:

It’s not that I’m scared of heights. It’s just that I’m scared for you.

Because he’s not honest, he stays quiet, and because he’s not honest, he quite hates himself.

*

The next time Aubrey climbs up onto the roof, it’s dawn, and Treasure isn’t there, which is just as well.

He reaches for one of the pink Wellingtons, the third one from the right – the one that was Easy’s – and shoves the set of nesting dolls inside it. Once he’s made sure it’s secure, he sticks the boot back on the protruding stone ornament, just as, somewhere, a bird starts to sing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is the matryoshka being hidden there important? extremely! when will it be relevant? oh, roughly about 300k words from now.............................
> 
> (im sorry, this is, in every sense, the slowest burn of all time)


	8. the past doesn't knock, november 1999

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which one, or two, or three people pine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in case someone lives in Norfolk: seriously, I'm sorry  
> in case someone lives anywhere in the uk: also sorry, in general  
> in case someone is a fan of the royal family: not actually sorry, because ugh 
> 
> Anyway, this is again one of those chapters that allude to dramatic things that happened in the past that you, as the readers, know nothing of, but! I promise, I have big plans for separate parts of this fic that will be just the adult characters' backstories and they'll come sooner than you think (unless you think they're coming next week :,)) and I'll try to make them interesting! 
> 
> Also, this is shortish but the next chapter will be.... different than the rest, definitely longer than this one, and also full of drama

Gustav Klimt, _Golden Tears_

*

I have pushed you in and out like a needle.

~Anne Sexton, _Ke 6-8018  
_

*

“May,” December sighs, approximately three seconds after picking up the phone.

“Well, how did you guess?” May asks with wonder.

“Your breathing. It always sounds expectant.”

What does that even mean, May wonders. She’s only calling December to spare her the long drive, and already December’s her usual, rude self.

I should have let you come here, she thinks desperately at the phone. I should have let you come here, and I bet there would have been traffic.

“Yante paid me a visit after all,” she says without further delay. She thinks December will appreciate it more than the polite brand of small talk that May excels in, and, sometimes, May can’t resist having Dee be appreciative.

After all, it’s so rare.

“Oh?”

“I think—” May starts, then hesitates. “I think he’s _lonely._ ”

“Well, I hardly care!” December says, impatient. “Did he say anything about the Monet?”

_Can you imagine loving sea enough to paint it over sixty times?_

“You know that he wouldn’t,” May says, and can’t quite keep the fondness out of her voice. It’s hard to dislike Yante, no matter what December says, because Yante picks her up and twirls her around whenever he sees her, and because he picks May’s husband’s pockets whenever they meet, for fun, only to give everything back half an hour later, and because, once, May had to break one of her vases on his head to keep him from butchering a guy with one of her steak knives for having called her inappropriate names.

(The blood would have gone all over her bookshelf, and she couldn’t have that.)

“Why would he come see you then?”

“Like I said, I think he’s lonely. Anyway, he didn’t mention a Monet at all, but.”

“But?”

May, in the end, can’t resist building up suspense.

“Do you know, my roses—”

“ _May_.”

“He gave me a postcard from Bath.”

“Bath,” December echoes. “You think…?”

“Yes. I do think.”

“How careless of him.”

May rolls her eyes.

“I don’t get involved anymore, remember? He had no reason to think I’d care about any of this.”

For a moment, December is silent. It’s not often that May gets her thoughtful, and she relishes the pause. December can’t know it, but her breathing has a quality to it, too – all measured restraint.

“He underestimated your willingness to assist me, then,” she says at last, and May smiles. December’s rare cruelty is always careful, almost elegant, and she’d kill May for even so much as implying it, but it’s all January.

“Oh, Dee,” she breathes, and shakes her head, disappointed. “He only underestimated your willingness to ask for my assistance.”

That startles a laugh out of December, and May memorises it for later, when she’ll be pressing the keys of her piano, half-heartedly thinking up a song.

“Anything else?” December prompts, and May tells her no, because she might be starved, but she’s not greedy.

“I went through his pockets when he was busy emptying my fridge, and found a few crumpled train tickets. Apparently, he goes to Norfolk every other weekend, but, do you know, somehow, I doubt that’s relevant. I mean, it’s _Norfolk_. There’s nothing there.”

*

It went like this, when Yante visited:

“Uglier and uglier every year, angel,” he said, perched on the edge of her bed when she woke up soon after dawn. “A decade or two, and you’ll be nothing special, just like the rest of us.”

It must have been a joke of some sort, because Yante, with his face scarred cubist, was hardly ‘nothing special.’

“Long time no see,” May said, brushing her hair off her face. “I’ve already regrown the rose bush you trampled the last time.”

“Worry not,” he said with that sly, broken-in-half disaster of a smile. “I trampled it again for you.”

“ _Yante_.”

“Routine is healthy, sweetheart.”

“Oh? Must be why _you_ ’re anything but.”

He didn’t laugh, and that was the first sign that something had changed.

Later, after he made her pancakes, he trailed after her as she walked between rows of flowers through her greenhouse, laughing at her apron.

“So you talk to them, huh,” he mused when she stopped to whisper at her tulips. She arched an eyebrow at him and refused to take the bait.

“I understand the sentiment, honest,” he promised, bringing his hands up in a defensive gesture. “I myself have taken to talking at the moths I’ve killed. I even _name_ them.”

“Oh? What do you name them, then?”

“Brian,” he said, flippant.

“Each one?”

“Yes.”

“Hmmm.”

Later, after having handed her the Bath postcard (“I didn’t have time to post it, but do write yourself something nice on the back and pretend it’s from me, hey?”), he said that January took to smirking.

“The man stopped cackling altogether,” he sighed, shaking his head. “I bet he doesn’t consider it elegant enough.”

“Cackling’s unacceptable, but _you_ are?” May marveled.

“I know, angel. I know. The man’s deranged. Say, how’s dear Benjamin? Does he still play croquet and cut crust off his toast?”

“I don’t see much of him, thank God. He’s pleasant enough in small doses, but— Well, you know how he gets. There’s only so much talk of Winnie-the-Pooh and the royal family gossip I can take.”

“If I knew the queen personally,” Yante said, smiling wickedly, “I’d try either to kill her or to seduce her.”

“She’s pretty invincible, isn’t she?”

“Seduce her, then,” he decided with a careless shrug, but then frowned and grew quiet.

“Yante, honey,” May said, and brushed his hair off his forehead. He was sprawled on her couch, and she knew it was a careful way of pretending carelessness, but she couldn’t help but want to grab a blanket and try and tuck him in. “You know how you always make bad decisions?”

“I don’t believe in bad decisions,” he said, dismissive, but briefly pressed her hand with his, like he wanted to keep her fingers there, tangled in his hair. “There are only fun decisions and boring decisions.”

“Well,” May said, helpless. “Whatever fun decision made you this sad, then?”

He left soon after, smile bigger than she’s ever seen it. They were tricky, Yante’s smiles – the wider, the less genuine.

“Stop by again, and soon, won’t you?” she said as he got into a car she’d never seen before that was, no doubt, stolen.

“You know, May,” he sighed, his hand tapping the roof of the car, “You and me, we’re made of the same stuff.”

He didn’t need to mention December’s name for her to, somehow, guess exactly what he’d meant.

*

She wakes in the middle of the night, not to sound, but to a feeling.

She heads downstairs and stalks into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water.

“May MacKinnon,” someone says behind her, and she doesn’t drop the glass, because it’s not December’s voice. “I hear you’ve been asking after me.”

She’d let you find her, December said.

“Berry,” May says, after she’s made sure her voice won’t sound croaky. “Ever heard of knocking?”

“Oh, but surely, you don’t _expect_ people to knock?” October says, amused. “Otherwise, why leave the door unlocked?”

They both know why she leaves the door unlocked, of course, but Berry has a habit of poking wounds. It’s the one thing May has never hated her for because it’s more never-outgrown childish curiosity than cruelty. 

May turns to face her with a sigh, and the moon is enough to see by – even without the benefit of colours, Berry is still the most beautiful person May has ever seen. God must have taken a holiday before creating her, because otherwise, He’d never put that much effort into making one person so lovely – May’s always thought that. Berry is caramel locks and a chin that fits perfectly into a cupped palm. She’s eyes like the pieces of amber washed up after Baltic Sea storms in the coastal town she grew up in, and she’s skin like she hasn’t worked a day in her life, even though she has.

Once, years ago, they gave her a blackeye, kicked her between the legs, and shaved all her beautiful hair off. Berry shrugged when they found her, too little too late, and said it’d grow out, but May – May cried, and picked the hair off the ground, pressing it to her chest.

“It’s a quiet neighbourhood,” May says, feeling clumsy. “Usually, no one disturbs me.”

“And you’re hungry for disturbance, don’t pretend you’re not,” Berry says, delighted, and takes a swig of the wine she must have found in one of the cupboards. “Mmm, red. It tastes like that dress you wore when we stole the Van Gogh.”

She’s sat on the table and she’s swinging her legs, as always pretending to be a kid.

“ _Landscape with Pollard Willows_ ,” May acknowledges. She dislikes thinking of it – it was a long time ago, and it’s a happy enough memory that it makes her positively miserable, whenever she recalls the theft. “Why are you here?”

“Perhaps I’ve missed you,” Berry says, then smiles when May flinches. “Kidding, stupid! You bore me, these days, and I don’t have to see you to know that.”

She deserves it, May.

She’d deserve it if Berry hit her, too, but Berry never would.

“Is it Hermenegilda?”

Berry doesn’t smile. It’s a game they used to play – May would have one shot at guessing Berry’s real name every day, and she’d always pick something ridiculous, hoping that Berry would laugh.

“Say,” Berry says, quiet. “What would you do if I told you that I’ve never had a name?”

May shrugs.

“I’d ask you what you’d like to be called.”

“Oh, but you wouldn’t,” Berry snaps, then leaps off the table. “You _wouldn’t_ , because you’d never have the guts to call me what I’d like to be called.”

“December wants your help,” May says without preamble. Berry glances at the wine bottle in her hands, and for a second, May expects her to smash it, and feels herself brace for it, but Berry only soundlessly puts it away.

“December Srember,” she mumbles, something that, May knows, is the Polish equivalent of ‘December Schmember.”

“Say I kneel and ask you nicely?” May tries, helpless. She doesn’t know what would be worse: disappointing December, or having Berry leave now that she’s come.

May hates her here, hates her _everywhere_ , but most of all, she hates her gone.

“Say you shut it?” Berry grumbles and leans close, narrows her eyes. May remembers how, years before, she’d try to draw her, over and over again, and how it’d never come out quite right, even though December was the one with a more complicated face. “Hey, May. Hey, May, hey, hey, hey.”

“Yes?” she says, patient, and stifles the urge to shove Berry away.

“What’s the difference between a girl who climbs a sleeping train and reaches up to touch a powerline, and a bird who perches on top of it?”

May thinks about it, and refuses to blink, because she won’t look away first, no matter how good Berry is at this.

“One dies upon contact, and the other doesn’t.”

“ _Time_ ,” Berry insists with a scowl. “The only difference between them is _time_.”

May doesn’t argue, because she’s the master of not-doing, and her biggest crime is how, once, she wouldn’t spare Berry anything of herself.

“Do you know, I can whistle Swan Lake now,” Berry announces, proud, and thank God that they live on one big island because wherever it is Berry spends her days walking (and that’s what she does – walks down country roads with a backpack, whistling to herself, arguing with the wind), here’s something May knows: even though she never would, if she had to, she could drive there, and it’d never take longer than a day.

Do you remember, she thinks, but doesn’t say, how you started chopping onions once, because you couldn’t stop crying, and needed an excuse?

Do you remember, she thinks, but doesn’t say, how I stood there and took advantage of it, crying even though I didn’t care enough to cry?

Do you remember, she thinks, but doesn’t say, how my pencil broke when I tried to get your smile right, and how I never sharpened it after that?

“Go on, then,” she says softly, and when Berry starts whistling music to her, she makes space for it in her memory without forgetting the sound of December’s laugh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! <3


	9. house of many rooms, december 1999

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a change of plans

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh god, guys.................... they cancelled my compulsory erasmus in france because of new travel restrictions, and, without going into details, that means that I have no idea whether in 2-3 weeks' time I'm going to be living in Poland or England or France after all or on a park bench somewhere and also I have no idea whether I'll graduate in 2021 or 2022 or 2023 + I still have tickets and stuff booked so basically now I'm going to Paris and joining the ranks of irresponsible covid-era idiots who travel for the sake of travelling??? And I guess I'll see Monet for free while wearing two masks at once??? Anyway, what I'm getting at with this desperate paragraph of oversharing is that I have 0 idea whether I'll be able to keep posting more or less regularly. Probably yes, because I really love writing this story and at this point it's sort of the one constant thing in life... but like, there's a possibility I might not post a chapter for well over a week at some point in the future, but it'll probably be an isolated incident. And hey, maybe I'll manage to write something during my 23 hours long bus drive to paris, ha..................... why is life just, like this 
> 
> Anyway, I'm afraid this chapter doesn't have many scenes with Easy and Aubrey in it, but it wouldn't really work from Aubrey's pov, and I've wanted to write this particular pov for ages so... And even in general, year 2 is still very very slow in terms of the main romance plot, I know, but! year 3 is where the romance starts. Not in the sense that it starts properly, but in the sense that it will stop being something that could be read as a platonic friendship by some very oblivious himbo who hasn't noticed the relationship tags. (When I say himbo I, of course, don't mean any of my lovely readers, and am instead fondly imagining someone like my dad someday stumbling on this story) I promise, years 3, 4 and 5 are all about the romance. And the pain. And the romance! 
> 
> Okay, I'll shut up now, enjoy <3

Claude Monet, _The Customs House at Varengeville_

*

I would like to be the air

that inhabits you for a moment

only. I would like to be that unnoticed

& that necessary.

~Margaret Atwood, _Variation on the Word Sleep_

*

She’s sitting on the windowsill in her dormitory, trying to write a poem about how her parents don’t _anything_ her when Jonathan Small comes looking for her – don’t love her, don’t hate her, but simply tolerate her. It’s always been so, and she’s come to think of herself as there, but insignificant, either in the way or not. At home, her father only notices her when she’s not there to pass him the newspaper in the morning, and her mother only notices her when Regina’s an inconvenience. She’ll click her tongue, irritated, and walk around her to get to the fridge without saying a word. It’s almost as if Regina is a chair or a coffee table, something not worth moving that one simply has to sidestep.

It doesn’t bother her that much, only she decided, years before, that she’d be a magical sort of a coffee table, the kind that’s _not_ in the way, and always has tea, cookies, and crosswords on top of it, like an enchanted object spelled to make life that tiny bit better for people who barely notice it.

Regina is trying to be careful about this thing with Jonathan, she really is, because she knows what he does to furniture – she’s seen him, kicking chairs in anger and stomping on an easel until it broke, all because he’d run out of red paint.

“My shirt,” he explains when she looks up from her notebook, hovering in the doorway. Regina wishes Jerusalem were here and hopes he won’t come in.

“What about your shirt?” she prompts, putting the notebook away. It wasn’t going well, anyway, the poem, all clumsy half-sentences about being something unaccounted for and about taking up space even though you’re not supposed to. Something about how, sometimes, the sky is green.

“A button fell off,” he clarifies awkwardly, holding it up between two fingers. She can see it now, how his shirt spreads open, forming the shape of a sideways eye, revealing a bit of skin. “Do you mind…?”

She decides to remember that he’s the sort of boy who gets flustered and doesn’t finish sentences. It’s a fair trial sort of thing – he’s horrible, and she wishes him bad things – she’s in the process of _doing_ bad things to him – but she refuses to pretend that he’s _all_ horrible. He’s the sort of person who’ll trip little Bessie up on the stairs – a _monster_ – but will carry some other first year to the infirmary after the kid sprains his ankle.

She doesn’t laugh at him for the button, only holds out her hand. It’s inevitable now, but at least he comes in without closing the door behind him. He leaves it ajar, and Regina assesses the width, wondering if anyone would come running if she screamed in the event of— something. Maybe he’s seen through her, Jonathan, and the button is just an excuse. Maybe he’ll grab her by the collar and threaten her for daring to try and toy with his feelings.

She doesn’t think she’d scream. She hates people having to come to her rescue, and it started with a cut, a six years old girl trying to prepare canapés for her parents’ formal lunch, and the mother complaining about wasted time while searching the cupboards for band-aids.

Jonathan joins her on the windowsill, and she doesn’t have to move to reach the sewing kit she keeps wedged between the wall and the faulty heat radiator.

“Should I take the shirt off?” he says, rubbing the back of his neck, and Regina feels like she’s supposed to react in some appropriate fourteen-years-old-girl fashion, blush or stutter or.

“Please, don’t,” she mumbles and half-hopes she’ll never have to see him again. The clumsiness is something she’ll have to remember, too, and, for a moment, she wishes she were Jerusalem, who’d never bother, who’s written Jonathan off as the bad guy, and who wouldn’t ever feel guilt or remorse doing what Regina’s doing.

(She hated Jerusalem doing this instead of her, of course, far more than she hates doing it herself.)

“I don’t like needles,” Jonathan confesses. Earnestness, now. What’s next? The window’s open, but Regina is not a fan of defenestration. If she were to kill someone – not that she’s planning to – she’d do it in their sleep, so that they’d never have to know.

“You’re not on the operating table,” she says, and tries to take the button from Jonathan in such a way that their fingers won’t brush, but no luck. She should have stretched out her hand palm-up and waited for him to drop the button over it, but that’d have been too much like asking for change. “I’ll be careful not to hurt you.”

He doesn’t talk while she works. He’s a loud breather, and every time he exhales, it causes a strand of her hair to brush her ear.

She _wants_ to hurt him, but that’ll have to wait.

“You’re good at this,” he says once she’s done, thumbing his collar like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands.

“Good at what? Buttons?”

“No, no,” he says hurriedly, and almost falls out the window, all without her help. “This whole sewing thing.”

She was the one to make his _Twelfth Night_ costume, a heavy robe and a shirt to bring out the blue of his eyes. They’re quite spectacular, Jonathan’s eyes, and sometimes Regina wonders whether he got them from his mother or his father and whether he deserved them.

She thinks she could have it all end now. She could say, hey, listen, why are you horrible to my friends?

She doesn’t.

“I’ve never painted a sunrise, you know,” he says, conversational, and she reaches around him to close the window because she can’t stand how she genuinely wanted to push him out of it just a moment ago, and how maybe she genuinely wants to still. “I must get up early one of these days, and try it.”

He smiles at her, almost shy, and the strangest thought occurs to her: they’ve only talked two, three times, and she’s nothing special, but the plan must be working, because she’s pretty sure he tore that button off his shirt himself, just to come here and have her sew it back on for him.

“Sunrises are for everyone,” she says without thinking because she can just imagine Easy getting all upset about Jonathan daring to paint something that beautiful. God, but she wishes it was Easy here with her now, or anyone really, Teddy Willow, professor Beauchamp, headmaster Longborn, even. Joseph Stalin.

Sunrises are for everyone, she thinks, but only some don’t sleep through them.

Jonathan Small combs his hair back, off his forehead, but always leaves one strand hanging loose over his eyebrow, and too many girls want to kiss him. Regina knows he’s not worth it without having to check, and so it’s a relief when he leaves without trying anything.

She doesn’t make sure to remember ‘didn’t kiss me’ as an argument in his favour, because the list is about what he did do, not what he refrained from doing.

She wonders whether it’s cheating.

Someone stops in the doorway, and her heart misses a beat because it must be Jonathan, back with some new excuse, only no. It’s Lavinia Pye, who never stops by, and, maybe because it’s so rare, Regina’s heart misses another beat when she realises.

“Really?” Lavinia says, disapproving. “Alone in a room with a boy, Mary? That’s against the rules, you know.”

Lavinia’s nose is upturned, and she tends to lift her chin up when she talks to those she considers ‘plebeian’, and so whenever she deigns to talk to Regina, it’s as if her nose is having a separate conversation with the ceiling at the same time. Regina used to find it irritating, but now it’s strangely endearing.

“Wasn’t I supposed to be a lesbian?” Regina says, raising an eyebrow, and watches Lavinia blush a furious red. “You can’t have it both ways.”

“Rules are rules, and I never meant— You clearly like him, and so he shouldn’t be here!”

“I’m wearing three jumpers, Lavinia,” Regina points out patiently. “There won’t be any pregnancy scares, I promise.”

“Are you even _listening_ to me?” Lavinia screeches, scandalised. “ _Rules are rules_.”

Regina hates how it’s all about a _boy_. Last year, after Lavinia was bullied into jumping in the lake, she let Regina talk about Mary Shelley and different types of stitches, and later, they played Scrabble without a board. At first, Lavinia would only go for passive-aggressive words like ‘hate’ and ‘get’ and ‘lost’ and ‘you’ and ‘freak,’ but after a while, it’d be ‘harpsichord’ to Regina’s ‘chord’ and words like ‘ephemeral’ and ‘cobweb.’ She didn’t snort when Regina mentioned Emily Dickinson, only grabbed the Scrabble letters by a fistful and spelled a line right there, in the middle of the floor, between her muddied shoes: _Bring me the sunset in a cup._ They kept making trains out of words long after Lavinia’s hair dried.

“I think you’re getting the wrong idea,” Regina says carefully. She doesn’t know what Lavinia can possibly see in Jonathan – is it that one loose strand of hair? – and she doesn’t know what it’s like to be in love, but she feels bad about the whole thing all the same. Lavinia, like most of them, is of the children who weren’t ever breastfed and had all the toys they wanted and then some, but never enough forehead kisses. She might be prickly and terrible, but Regina wishes she had someone love her back now, not in five, ten years, even if it’s a bastard like Jonathan Small.

“Well, _I_ think I’m done with you!” Lavinia exclaims, fisting the sides of her skirt. “Do me a favour, and don’t ever speak to me _ever_ again.”

She leaves after that, slamming the door shut behind her.

“All that, because of a _boy_?” Jerusalem says later, incredulous, after she’s needled it out of Regina over dinner.

“Did she really say ‘ever’ twice?” Aubrey mumbles with a frown. “That’s not like her.”

Regina shrugs and doesn’t turn her head to search for Lavinia at the other end of the table. She figures ‘don’t ever speak to me _ever_ again’ includes things like unnecessary staring, too, and not just verbal overtures.

*

Teddy starts off by informing Regina that she’s only there because she’s responsible for making and/or tweaking the costumes. Jerusalem kicks him in the ankle, but he’s so absorbed in thought that he doesn’t even react, only keeps staring at the floor with unseeing eyes, chin in hands.

“Well, what is it?” Easy says once a minute has passed.

Silence.

Aubrey, that Regina understands. Whatever this is about, Aubrey is co-directing the thing, even though Teddy would never admit it out loud.

But her?

“As you know, we’re playing _Twelfth Night_ twice,” Teddy says, waving his hand around like a conductor.

“How about you skip the introduction and explain why I’m missing the first batch of shepherd’s pie for this?” Jerusalem hurries him, swinging her legs.

They’re all sitting on desks pushed aside for the rehearsal that finished ten minutes ago, and out of all of them, only Aubrey and Easy are sharing, even though it can’t be comfortable. The two of them resemble a human pretzel, and both manage to look like they’re greatly inconvenienced by the arrangement, even though there are at least fifteen free desks around.

“Well, see, Young, I can’t bloody skip the introduction!” Teddy says, agitated, scowling at the floor like it’s personally wronged him. “Because, see, Young, it just doesn’t bloody make sense without the introduction!”

“Bloody get to it, then,” Easy mumbles. That, somehow, gets Teddy’s attention.

“You!” he snaps. “This is all about you, really.”

“Oh?” Easy says, all exaggerated interest. “How so?”

Teddy sighs and brushes his hair off his forehead.

“For one of our two planned showings, I want you to play Viola, and Young to play Sebastian.”

Ah. The costumes. That explains it.

“Sorry, what?” Jerusalem screeches. Teddy doesn’t even glance at her.

“Young will be fine, since Sebastian doesn’t have that many lines, but Viola is a different story. More lines, _and_ you’d have to wear a dress for a bit.”

“I can manage,” Easy says, then, before Teddy can relax: “Only I don’t see why I should have to.”

“Seconded,” Aubrey says after clearing his throat. “We only have a little over two weeks left, and there’s something to be said for having a boy play Viola and having a girl play Sebastian, yes, but are you sure—”

“So I have a brother,” Teddy interrupts, then moves his jaw like he’s chasing the aftertaste of the words. “A little brother.”

“Oh?” Easy mouths, leaning forward. He doesn’t say it, but he doesn’t have to: convince me, convince me.

“My family’s coming to see the play,” Teddy explains, rubbing the back of his neck. “I want it to be a Christmas present of a sort.”

“I don’t follow,” Aubrey says, hooking his ankle with Easy’s to keep him from trying to kick Teddy’s bag off the desk.

“It’s just how in _Twelfth Night_ , Viola and Sebastian are pretty much identical. All the other characters keep mistaking one for the other, and, well, that’s a bit strange, isn’t it? They can’t be paternal twins because they’re a boy and a girl, _unless_ …”

“Unless?” Jerusalem prompts. Teddy turns to look at her at last.

“It would mean a great deal if a girl played Sebastian and a boy played Viola, is what I’m saying.”

“It would mean a great deal to whom?” Easy demands, and Aubrey, the grammar freak, hides a smile behind his sleeve. Regina can just see it from where she’s sitting.

“To _me_ ,” Teddy says helplessly. “It would mean a great deal to _me_.”

“Because you have a little brother,” Regina says. Teddy makes a face.

“ _Yes_.”

“So, you want me to play a girl pretending to be a boy,” Easy says slowly, as if he’s decided that Teddy only proposed it because he’s too slow to understand the implications.

“What will Longborn say?” Aubrey throws in, ever practical.

“He won’t say a thing, because he won’t know in advance,” Teddy says with a challenging look. “Neither will Beauchamp.”

“Oh, then we’re tricking everyone?” Jerusalem guesses, immediately perking up.

“Everyone including the rest of the cast,” Teddy admits.

“I don’t like you,” Easy tells Teddy bluntly. “You forced me to _climb a building_. Why should I help you?”

“Please?” Teddy says simply, spreading his hands. Easy narrows his eyes.

“Fine, but you owe me.”

“ _Anything_.”

“Mmm. _Oh, if it prove / Tempests are kind and salt waves fresh in love_.”

Teddy grins.

“ _Thank_ you.”

“Don’t get overexcited. I just want to see Small’s face once he realises.”

Later, when Teddy ushers them out of the classroom, Regina hangs back.

“Christ,” Teddy sighs when he spots her. “Can’t you just leave and let me have my mental breakdown in peace?”

“I can, only this must have been hard. Would you like a hug?”

“Oh no,” Teddy groans, shaking his head. “Frankie says I’m terrible at hugs, trust me, you don’t want to experience it. Tea, though. Christ, what I wouldn’t give for a nice cup of—”

“Consider it done,” Regina cuts in. Ten minutes later, they’re sat on the windowsill, two steaming mugs next to them.

“I’ve been a terrible brother, is the thing,” Teddy confesses, unprompted. “I got tired of it, and so now I’m going to be a terrible son instead.”

“So, then, it’s really your parents that are terrible,” Regina guesses.

“Not my brother?”

She shakes her head, then reconsiders.

“Well, is he?”

“No, he’s not,” Teddy admits, the ‘he’ standing out, like something that’d be separated by commas when written down. “He’s the sweetest kid. He’s only a year younger than you lot, and he collects nutshells. Something about Thumbelina? When he was small, he would line them up on the windowsill, put wool inside, and leave the window ajar at night, so someone tiny would have a place to sleep if they needed it.”

Regina smiles.

“What’s his name, anyway?”

“L— Lindsay.”

“Lovely. Any special wishes for the new costumes?”

“Make them pretty?”

“Usually, you’re more demanding,” Regina notes, glancing at him curiously.

“Usually, people agree to things like this for extra credit, not to cater to my whims.”

She pats his knee and keeps him company until he’s finished drinking his tea, and for a little bit longer after that.

*

Here’s something Regina has never told anyone about:

A few weeks after the end of her first year at Wilgefortis, she couldn’t get used to the rarely interrupted quiet of their huge house, stifling like a woollen coat, and so she walked out the front door and kept walking. She took a bus, because she happened to be there when it stopped on the side of the road, and then she boarded a train after a flip of a coin, and ended up taking another after spinning with her eyes closed for a minute to see what direction she’d end up facing once she’d stop. She got off at the last station and walked until the afternoon turned into an evening and until she found herself at the coast. There was a dirt road leading to the sea there, and not much more – salt in the air, grass like untamed hair, a bright red telephone box. 

At first, she figured she must have dreamt it. Then, after she walked up to it and got inside, where she could prod at the walls, she decided it must have been a mere decoration, or, at the very least, out of order. 

She searched her pockets for coins anyhow, and wouldn’t you know it, that phone in the middle of nowhere actually rang.

“Hello?” Regina’s mother said after twelve seconds. “Hello, who is this?”

She couldn’t have noticed that Regina had left, or she would have picked up sooner, anxious for news.

But then, maybe she wouldn’t have.

“Hello?” Regina echoed, as if it was her who'd picked up the phone all confused. She waited for her mother to recognize her voice, but it never came. Of course it never came. Never mind. She would walk down to the beach, and the waves would be constant, unchanging, like a flapping skirt. She would walk in up to her knees, and the water would be cold, but bearable. 

“Hello? Who am I speaking to?” her mother repeated, agitated, and Regina hanged up. She wished for a pen, so that she could scrawl her address on the side of the phone, with a note saying ‘come here if you have nowhere else to go,’ but she figured it was for the best that she didn’t have one on her, because if she wrote something like that, no one would ever show up anyway, and even if they did, her mother would turn them away before Regina would have the chance to get to the door.

That’s what Regina hated most about the house being a cage – not how she was kept inside, because here she was, beyond the edges of tourist maps, free as a bird – but how others were kept _out_ , dozens of rooms and no one to fill them, people without homes drowsing somewhere in holey sleeping bags. One day, she would have a big house with many rooms herself, only she’d let people inside, and she’d have the beds ready for all sorts of guests.

Years from now, she promised herself, I will come back and put my address here, for everyone in need.

*

The first and only time Jonathan Small kisses her, it’s on the cheek, and Lavinia sees. She looks betrayed across the corridor, and Regina knows that she must really mean it now – how she wants Regina to stay away.

Later, she listens to Easy and Aubrey as they comb _Twelfth Night_ for Viola’s lines scene after scene, and watches Easy’s throat work around words. It’s very expressive, for a throat, and she decides that if he were to cry, it’d start there.

For her, it always starts with her nose, sniffling before the tears, but she doesn’t cry now. She refuses to.

*

This Christmas, Easy is staying at Wilgefortis again.

“Just me and you, little one,” December Graham says to him after class. 

“I’m thirteen,” Easy protests.

“Yes, yes,” she says, indulgent. “Hey, what do you say we make Mr. Graham angry this year?”

Regina knows what it’s about because she accidentally overheard December on the phone the other day. She was hiding in a nook between the bathroom door and a heat radiator after having escaped Jonathan, because sometimes she just couldn’t stand the play-pretend, and December walked the length of the empty corridor, back and forth, phone pressed to her ear. Regina was used to landlines, and seeing her with a mobile was strange – strange enough that she forgot to cover her ears.

“Sorry, did I hear this right?” December snapped, hand on hip. “Did you just give me an ultimatum?”

Silence for one, two, three breaths.

“Oh, you’ve already sold it! What do you mean, _you’ve already sold it_? That’s _my_ painting you’re talking about!”

Silence for one, two, three—

“Well, then, if it’s _your_ money, then I suppose I’ll feel no remorse withdrawing it from the bank and setting it all on fire! It’s getting quite cold, you see, and I could certainly use something flammable for my fireplace…”

Silence—

“ _Fine_. To _hell_ with you, Malcolm. To hell with you.”

“I like making people angry,” Easy says now, nodding slowly. “It’s entertaining.”

“My husband hates artistic expression, probably because he’s as dull as a broken pencil himself,” December tells him, inspecting her nails. “We’ll buy gallons of paint before Christmas, and we’ll show him, hmmm?”

Easy grins.

*

The opening night is more of an event than Regina expected, everyone running around tripping over others’ bags, forgetting lines, and reapplying make-up.

Lavinia, who still won’t talk to her, stubbornly stares into the mirror as Regina combs her hair for her.

No need to bother with historical accuracy, Teddy said. Just make it look fancy.

“ _Ouch_ ,” Lavinia says pointedly, even though Regina hasn’t tugged on her hair at all.

“Hey,” Regina says, parting and re-parting Lavinia’s hair. It’s rougher than she expected, as if Lavinia doesn’t spend an hour each morning rubbing oils into it after all. “Is it because he’s important, or do you actually like him?”

It’s one of the more ridiculous things she’s said in her life – implying that Lavinia, already obnoxiously rich, is plotting to marry even richer at the ripe age of fourteen.

“You shouldn’t read Sappho,” Lavinia snaps, scowling at Regina in the mirror. “You’re far too stupid for poets.”

“If you say so.”

“I _do_ say so!”

Absently, Regina wonders if Lavinia will stop wearing that scarf Regina knitted for her now.

“He doesn’t _really_ like me, if it’s any consolation,” she tells her once she can no longer pretend there’s any point in parting her hair further. “He just _thinks_ he does.”

“Prick,” Lavinia mumbles.

“Who? Me?”

Lavinia shoots her an incredulous look and gets up so suddenly that the chair almost falls over.

“Young, you clown!” she yells at Jerusalem, who hasn’t changed into Sebastian’s costume yet and is pretending to be a penguin a dozen feet away, clumsily swaying from side to side. “Come do my hair!”

Regina tries not to take it personally, but fails, because it’s about as personal as it gets.

“I could have done it for her,” Bessie says, kneeling to pick up a dozen of spilled bobby pins. “Does she think I couldn’t, or something?”

“I think she didn’t notice you.”

Bessie has taken to trailing after her, and half the time Regina forgets she’s there herself. She’s never met anyone even half as quiet as that kid.

“I don’t exactly blend in, do I?” Bessie mumbles, sliding the pins into her pocket.

“You walk very quietly,” Regina explains, patting Bessie’s collar flat for her.

“I have to,” Bessie says, then frowns, like she didn’t mean to. “I _had_ to.”

“I see. Perhaps you could be a spy for the government one day.”

“The government wouldn’t want me though, would it?”

Sometimes, Bessie scares Regina a little, wise beyond her years, eerily mature, and yet childish, both twenty and seven, but hardly thirteen. One day, in her huge monstrosity of a house, Regina will keep the nicest room for Bessie, and she’ll dust it every day, but she hopes that Bessie won’t ever end up needing it.

“We can always try and overthrow it,” she says, then points to Bessie’s hand. “May I?”

“Go ahead.”

“Your life line is something, so we have a lot of time to plan a little coup d'état.”

Bessie makes a serious face, like she’s genuinely considering it. Her hand is warm in Regina’s grip, like she’s been out in the sun, even though it’s been cloudy and cold for weeks now.

“I’d rather go into marine biology, but if overthrowing governments is something you’re planning on doing, you have my full support.”

“Your heart line is even longer,” Regina tells her, delighted despite not really believing in all that. “You’re a lucky one.”

“I could use some luck,” Bessie admits. “I’m going to save whales.”

“Yes, you are.”

Just then, Easy walks past in nothing but a loose shirt and tights, and Regina desperately wishes she had a camera.

She finds Teddy in front of the auditorium, welcoming the parents.

“My tie’s all wrong,” he whispers through his teeth. “I feel like a hanged man.”

“You look it, too,” Bessie tells him. “You’re sunfish-white.”

“As long as I don’t smell like one… Oh, Christ, there they are.”

Regina registers Mrs. Willow first because she’s worthy of the name, tall and slender, almost mantis-like. She’s wearing red lipstick, and she has two moles on her face that make her look like a film star. Mr. Willow is shorter than her by two inches at least, and he has his hair slicked back from his face, like a film star also.

“They do seem pretty intimidating,” she admits in a lowered voice.

“Like the sarcastic fringehead,” Bessie decides and sighs when they both turn to gape at her. “A scary fish. Territorial, aggressive, and its mouth splays open like _wow_.”

“Okay, National Geographic,” Teddy says impatiently, watching his parents manoeuvre through the crowd of adults in expensive suits like it’s one of the Plagues of Egypt coming. “How about you get back inside?”

“That’s a pretty amazing name, sarcastic fringehead!” someone says from behind them, causing all three of them to jump in surprise. When Regina spins around, there’s a kid standing in front of her, hair up in a Dutch crown braid and a red bowtie sitting crooked at their collar. “We had fish in our pond once, but then cats ate them, and Mum wanted to sue someone, except there was no one to sue because the cats were strays. I mean, she was ready to sue the cats themselves, only the law doesn’t allow it, which I know all about since I’m supposed to be a lawyer when I grow up.”

“Lindsay,” Teddy sighs, glancing nervously over his shoulder to where his parents seem to have stopped for a chat with another appropriately posh-looking couple.”

“Hello, brother,” Lindsay says merrily and grins when Teddy reaches out to adjust his bowtie for him. “They made me wear a skirt, but it’s fine because I actually like this one.”

The skirt is brown and trails to the kid’s ankles. He’s wearing a mustard-yellow cardigan over it, at least three sizes too big, his hands lost inside its long sleeves.

“Well, at least they let you have the bowtie,” Teddy says quietly. He sounds a little like he’s suffocating.

“No, they didn’t!” Lindsay contests merrily. “I only put it on now because I figured they wouldn’t want to make a scene. Anyway, can I talk to National Geographic for a moment, please? I’ve never heard about fish with scary mouths, and it sounds fascinating.”

“My name is not really National Geographic,” Bessie mumbles, her feet turned inwards so that the tips of her shoes touch.

“Yeah, I figured, but it’d suit you if it were your name! Do you have pictures of the fish on you by any chance?”

“I— don’t,” Bessie stammers, glancing at Teddy with confusion. Teddy only shrugs, visibly confused himself.

“How about you draw it for him?” Regina offers, searching her pockets for a napkin.

“ _Him_?”

“Um,” Teddy says helplessly.

“Um,” his small brother echoes, no more eloquent. 

“Yes, I can draw it for him,” Bessie says hurriedly. “Only, what about _Twelfth Night_?”

“ _Twelfth Night_?” Lindsay says, lightning up. “Not _Midsummer_?”

“And that’s only the start,” Regina tells him with a smile. “How about you sit with Bessie in the front row, to see the play better? Your parents won’t mind?”

“My parents are very good at minding things, like the existence of bees, and spring rains, and corduroy trousers, but I’m sure it’s fine,” Lindsay says, thoughtful, then pats Teddy on the lapel of his blazer. “ _You_ tell them!”

After that, Regina feels only a little guilty about leaving Teddy on his parents’ mercy. She leads Lindsay and Betty to the front row, where Kipp’s sprawled across three seats, his shirt already fairly wrinkled.

“One extra?” he says, arching his eyebrow at Lindsay. “Well, we’ve got no choice then, friends! Someone must sit in my lap.”

“The whole row’s empty, Mr. Kipp,” Bessie points out, causing him to laugh.

“Is that so, Miss Bessie?”

“Well, Bessie is nice too,” Lindsay decides, lightning up. “It doesn’t as much time to say it.”

“Kipp,” Regina says, gripping him by the shoulders. “You’re in the play.”

“Yes?”

“You’ve forgotten, haven’t you?”

“I’m wearing the costume, of course I haven’t _forgotten_.”

“Then why, in God’s name, are you _here_?”

“Stage fright?” he says with a smile, and she doesn’t buy it for one second. It takes ten seconds of intense staring to get him to stop grinning. “I saw Easy in a dress,” he whispers, relenting. “What’s that about?”

“A surprise,” she whispers back and shoves him off the seat, then follows him backstage. Easy will most likely need her there, what with the frequent changing of clothes.

The play starts five minutes late, Aubrey desperately clutching his script at Regina’s side, and, apart from Jonathan’s crown falling off his head when he realises Easy is playing Viola, the first act goes smoothly.

“You owe me,” Easy reminds Teddy after having walked off the stage, and scowls when Teddy pats his cheek with a mellow smile. “Careful, or—”

“The make-up, I know. I do owe you.”

“A thousand quid will suffice,” Easy says, nonchalant, and lets Aubrey fuss with the sleeves of his costume.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Teddy snorts.

“I’ve seen your brother crying in the audience,” Regina tells him with a small smile. “Bessie was passing him tissues.”

“A thousand quid,” Teddy relents, looking like he’s about to cry himself.

In the end, _Twelfth Night_ is a big success. In their last scene together, Kipp kisses Easy’s cheek with a smack so loud that it echoes, and, after the last act, Jerusalem convinces Easy to keep the dress on for the ‘curtain call.’ Easy gets applauded for so long that he gets tired of faking a smile halfway through it and stands there with a frown as people clap and clap, whereas Jerusalem bows three times, sweeping the floor with her newsboy, which she seems to have brought with her just for that.

“Your parents look like they’ve eaten something sour,” Regina tells Teddy, squeezing his shoulder. “Your brother, on the other hand…”

“They’ve decided he’s the black sheep of the family,” Teddy says with a careless shrug that must be at least half-fake. “I’ve simply decided I’d be one, too.”

“Beauchamp doesn’t seem angry, if it’s any consolation. He looks _amused_ , of all things.”

“I do love a good sabotage ploy,” the man in question admits, appearing next to them like something from a magician’s hat. “Fortunately, so does Mrs. Graham.”

“A success, wasn’t it?” Teddy says, nowhere near as rattled as he was before the first act.

“I am never ever wearing a dress again!” Easy yells from somewhere, no doubt in the middle of struggling to take it off.

Regina counts heads and doesn’t smile just yet, because there’s one missing.

*

“I’m fine,” Kipp promises when she finds after half an hour of looking, curled up under the covers on her bed. “I figured you’d be busy for a while. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have…”

He doesn’t look fine. He’s staring at the wall and his eyes have gone glossy. He was a spectacular Antonio just an hour ago, and now here he is, an embryo shape pressed into her mattress.

“We could talk about it,” she offers, lowering herself to the floor.

“We can’t,” he says, and laughs, almost bitter. “I have secrets.”

“I’m good at keeping those.”

“Maybe I’m not scared you’ll tell. Maybe I just don’t want even you to know.”

“Maybe,” she agrees, and he quirks a smile, but still won’t look at her.

“Alright, so, my parents can be pretty amazing,” he says, then raises the covers on one side. She takes the cue and crawls inside, then lets him secure the covers around her before settling with her face two inches away from his.

“They can be pretty amazing,” Kipp repeats after clearing his throat, “but they’re nowhere near as amazing as Teddy, and Teddy— Well, Teddy is a prick.”

He’s shaking, and Regina’s not sure if it’ll help any, but she slides her hand between his jumper and the shirt he had on as Antonio and rubs his back.

“I mean, he changed the whole play for his little brother, didn’t he?” he mumbles as Regina trails her fingers down his spine, counting the knobs. “Twice, too!”

“But you’re not like Lindsay, are you?”

“Transgender? No. Do you know, your pillow smells like vanilla. What have you been doing, baking cakes here?”

“If I were baking cakes, you’d know, since I’d share,” she promises, tangling her legs with his. Once, he spent three hours teaching her foxtrot just because, even though it meant that later he got an F on an essay that was due next morning.

“I’m intersex,” he tells her with closed eyes, and she squeezes his hand, clammy with sweat.

“Alright. Thank you for telling me.”

“You don’t know what it means, do you?” he says, amused.

She shakes her head with an apologetic look, and he sighs and explains, in a typical Kipp fashion, all dramatic phrases and flying hands.

“….And so woe is me, since no one will ever date me, or marry me. I suppose I could, I don’t know, trick someone into marrying me, but withholding information like that is surely grounds for divorce, so what’s the point?”

“That’s stupid,” Regina says, nudging his ankle with her foot. “People will too date you and marry you. Who wouldn’t?”

“Most people, Reggie,” he tells her with a sigh, like it’s a conversation he’s had many times, though she doubts that he has. Perhaps he’s had it in his head, over and over again, until it became something recycled and worn. “You wouldn’t marry me, would you?”

“Of course I wouldn’t,” she laughs. “But that has nothing to do with, er...”

“My genitals?”

“Yeah, that. I wouldn’t marry you because you’re insufferable. And I’m not a hundred percent sure about that yet, but I wouldn’t marry you because you’re, well, a _boy_.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.”

“This calls for a high five.”

“It does _not._ ”

“Does, too!”

“Anyway, you can still date people, can’t you? We’re fourteen, it’s not like you have to, well…”

“No, but listen, listen,” he says, animated, and frames her face with his hands. “I don’t like that at all, because I think I’m the truly pathetic sort, and that once I fall in love that’s it, it’ll be forever.”

“So you’re never going to fall in love, then?” she asks, doubtful.

“Well, is it worth the risk?”

“Depends on the insurance company.”

He smiles, and she presses her hand flat to his.

“Hmm?”

“A high five, as per request.”

“Ah, Reggie. See, I _would_ marry you, but you’re clearly way out of my league!”

They stay there for hours, Kipp telling her about all the surgeries that almost were, about the bad doctors and about better ones, and – a miracle, that – no one ever comes looking for them, not even after Kipp has fallen asleep with his nose buried in Regina’s vanilla pillow. If Regina were to write a poem about it, it’d go like this:

_thank you, thank you, thank you._

*

“It’ll be the new millennium, the next time we see each other,” Kipp tells Easy, playfully pinching his cheeks. Easy scowls, but allows it.

“Take care of Bessie,” Regina whispers. She kisses Easy on the cheek once Kipp lets go of it.

“Yes, yes,” Easy grumbles, half-heartedly pushing her away. “Go already.”

Aubrey doesn’t linger, for fear of imposing, and Easy doesn’t stop him, for fear of letting others see that he feels anything other than anger. It’s such a well-oiled routine that sometimes Regina forgets neither of them realises.

“Guess what,” she whispers in Kipp’s ear later, even though she really, really doesn’t believe in those things. “Your heart line is the longest I’ve ever seen.”

Once they’ve found themselves a train compartment, she distracts Aubrey from staring out the window with a game of cards, and thinks of that huge house she’s going to have in the future, of how there’ll be all kinds of jam flavours in the kitchen cupboards, everybody’s favourites. She tries to guess what kind of jam Lavinia likes best, and wonders if this time the few weeks she’s about to spend at home will feel like months or years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that's one of Kipp's secrets. I really didn't want it to be some Dramatic Reveal or a plot twist and I swear, the other secrets he has have to do with Wilgefortis and art stuff and /they're/ the dramatic mysterious things I've been alluding to all this time rather than this :,) 
> 
> And yes, another new character. Please forgive me.
> 
> I also realise that some of the conversations in this chapter were less graceful than they could have been, but sheltered kids in the 90s and all that. I hope it was alright, but please let me know if you disagree and think anything here was harmful and could use editing!


	10. dear -- , december 1999

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a not-yet-love at first letter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hmmm, so this is where I start adding extra chapters because I can't ever be consistent. Aubrey & Easy are only briefly mentioned in this one, because I really, really wanted to write an epistolary almost love story between two sweet kids, buttt the good news is that the next chapter, also unplanned, will be the most romantic from all the part 2 chapters, hurray! The bad news is that I'm not sure when I'll post it, since my ill-advised trip is tomorrow, but I'll try to have it up soon-ish (1,5 week at most?). Also, my living situation has cleared up somewhat and apparently I'm going into my final year at uni (very much not as planned) so posting might be tricky from October, but hopefully I'll be able to keep up the once-a-week thing. 
> 
> Look, I promise, part 3 onwards is all about the romance......................... :,))) And this chapter is actually kind of important in its own way because it will lead to what will be a direct contrast to literally all the other ships in this mess of a story 
> 
> tw for transphobia, including a character being misgendered (mentioned rather than directly in the plot, if that makes sense). (I'm very bad at trigger warnings, by the way, and should probably use them more, so if you ever feel like there should be one before a specific chapter, please let me know!)

Stephen Mackey, _The Cagery_

_*_

Then I met you and unavoidably you were special.

~Anne Sexton _, A Self-Portrait in Letters_

_*_

_Dear Bessie,_

_I hope my writing to you is not too strange, but I really, REALLY wanted to discuss the fish. The sarcastic fringehead one, I mean. I have found an encyclopaedia entry on it, and have learned that its Latin name is Neoclinus Blanchardi, which sounds like the name of some pompous philosopher from back when they thought that Earth was the Sun and not the other way around. I have also learned that the sarcastic fringehead eats squid eggs in huge quantities and that it’s prone to territorial battles (how very Macbeth of it!). The encyclopaedia never mentioned the freaky mouth, which I think is a lie by omission, because that’s definitely its most recognisable feature, wouldn’t you agree? I mean, not mentioning it is like discussing Picasso and not mentioning how sexist he was, which – well, actually. We do tend to do that, don’t we?_

_Anyway, I was thinking about how they’re so territorial, the fringeheads, and then I started thinking about how EVERYTHING is supposed to be, and then I found my class notes on Darwin. The thing is, I decided that I didn’t like the sarcastic fringehead at all, and felt awfully dishonest after, since I’d been genuinely fascinated by them when I met you, and I just imagined you somewhere at Wilgefortis, unaware that I messed up and started hating your fish._

_Well, ‘hate’ is a strong word. What I really mean is that I much prefer the clownfish, which can live safely in a hostile environment, though perhaps calling a sea anemone a ‘hostile environment’ is a bit unfair, too. I just find it very heart-warming that something so small and colourful and harmless is safe inside something that is normally poisonous. In my biology class, they tell us all about the cruelty, and all about Darwin, but hardly ever mention the good things. Well, that’s St. Hilda’s for you – pretty hostile itself, is what I mean._

_Anyway, I suppose I wanted to apologise for not being a fan of the sarcastic fringehead after all. If you’d like, you can explain to me how that’s pretty stupid of me, since I suspect it must be, but I understand if you’d rather invest your time in something more worthwhile. Only, well, I thought I’d write you and risk being bothersome, because I’ve always wanted a pen pal, and it seemed like you didn’t hate me when we met, which is something that doesn’t happen to me all that often._

_Oh, and how is your Christmas break?_

_With Love,_

_Lindsay Willow_

_*_

_Dear Lindsay,_

_no, your writing to me is not too strange, or it is, but only because I am not used to people sending me letters, not because our short acquaintanceship is not good enough a reason for starting a correspondence._

_To be honest, my area of expertise is the study of marine mammals, not fish, though even that is a stretch – I am a bit too young still to be an expert on anything apart from tying my shoes (I know nine convenient, easy to undo knots, so I like to think that I am an expert). Of course, it does not offend me (or even sadden me) that you would take a dislike to the sarcastic fringehead, however, I do think that it is a bit unfair to dismiss them because of something like territorial battles. We tend to think that animals are all innocent, and violent only because it is in their nature, but frankly, there are instances of animals acting cruelly for no discernible reason other than their own entertainment (see: dolphins), and therefore blaming the sarcastic fringehead for being territorial when it evolved into a territorial animal is, well, maybe not UNFAIR as such, but I do not see the point of such sentiment._

_Still, I think I understand what you mean about the clownfish, and trust me, Wilgefortis is not like a sea anemone either, or maybe it is, but the fish it does allow inside without it being painful for them are few and far between, and I certainly do not belong to that particular circle. Still, better Wilgefortis than the orphanage._

_Of course, I imagine Wilgefortis must seem like heaven to you, even for the simple fact of it being co-educational. I am truly sorry, Lindsay – I am not mistaken in thinking that St. Hilda’s must be an all-girls establishment?_

_As for Christmas break, I am not entirely sure how much detail is in the narrow range between ‘insufficient’ and ‘exhausting’, but I remember you looking particularly adoring whenever Ezra – the boy who played Viola – would walk past after “Twelfth Night,” so I will risk your boredom and tell you all about him, how about that? See, he is an orphan as well, and we are both spending Christmas break here at school, and with December Graham no less. Ezra is very artistically gifted, and so December Graham is letting him paint the walls and the ceiling of the entrance hall. He would never admit it, but I think he is scared of heights, and so instead of having him use a ladder, December Graham paid some men to build him a very sturdy scaffolding, and then, once it was ready, proceeded to kick it a few times to show him just how sturdy it was._

_(She also dragged a few old mattresses downstairs and placed them around the scaffolding to assure him that even if he did fall, he would be all right)._

_What he is painting: halfway up the walls, there is the sea. It ends in angry splashes of foam, so that, when standing in the middle of the hall, one feels like I imagine Moses must have, the waters opening around him and his people in the one dry spot. (Actually, I have no idea what Moses could have felt like since I am not particularly religious and have never given it much thought, but it must have been an experience). Above that, the ceiling is, of course, the sky. Ezra only started painting it yesterday, but it already looks very promising – the kind of blue that you only get after sunrise, too dark for day and too light for night, the last of the sun and the first of stars._

_December Graham keeps clapping her hands in delight and talking about how ‘the bastard’ is going to be so furious, whoever ‘the bastard’ is._

_We dressed the Christmas tree yesterday, too, and it is ever so much nicer than the ones we used to have at the orphanage. It has lights, for one. December Graham hoisted me up and let me place a glittery plastic star on top, too._

_How is YOUR Christmas break going?_

_With Respect,_

_Bessie Lawrence_

_P. S. It has never occurred to me to want a pen pal, but your letter was a very nice surprise, and so I am not opposed to the idea._

_P.P.S. What I mean by that is that you are not at all bothersome._

_*_

_Dear Bessie,_

_First of all, thank you for replying to my letter. It made my day so much nicer, and it didn’t start out nice at all – I had to wear holey shoes to Mass because Mother wouldn’t let me wear the boots Teddy got me (‘not elegant enough’ she said, which roughly translates to ‘not girly enough’, in case you were wondering) and so, by the time we got there and back, I had the whole Lake District inside them and my socks were completely soaked. There aren’t many things in this world that I hate as much as I hate wearing wet socks, Bessie, and these include, in no particular order: pickles, arsenic, that one encyclopaedia entry on duck genitals (ew), beartraps, chandeliers bigger than tables, tables bigger than carpets, carpets that are really animal furs, and vacuum cleaners._

_(I’m also not a fan of raisins, but raisins are a delight compared to wet socks, especially in December)._

_You’ve mentioned easy-to-undo knots for shoe lacing, but what about impossible-to-undo knots? Maybe I could tie my boots in such a way that no one would be able to get them off me, except I don’t really feel like sleeping in them. I do wish shoes AND sleeping were voluntary. Imagine all the things we must be missing, spending 1/3 of our life in bed._

_Anyway, marine mammals, hmm? So which one’s your favourite, then?_

_St. Hilda’s is, indeed, an all-girls establishment. You know, I was supposed to go to Wilgefortis, like Teddy, except I told my parents that I wasn’t going to wear a skirt once there (though, actually, I don’t mind skirts at all, as long as they don’t have frills (I don’t mind frills either, but I don’t like them on skirts – I know, I know, I’m picky)), and apparently, what they heard was ‘oh, please, send me someplace where I’ll have to wear a skirt at all times and where there’ll always be hair in the mashed potatoes!’._

_Anyway, that’s fine, because now, at thirteen, I’m not half as naïve as I was at twelve, and I realise that even if I did go to Wilgefortis, I’d still have to wear a skirt. But the potatoes!_

_Still, I imagine even St. Hilda’s must be better than the orphanage. Say, is it true that kids at orphanages have to shake cockroaches out of their shoes when they get up in the morning?_

_(I know that’s very untactful of me, but I’ve heard that from two separate sources, and I’d really like to verify! And if it is true, then, well, personally, I find cockroaches sweet! They have those long… um… antlers? They’re pretty cute.)_

_Oh, the painting sounds wonderful! I wish I could see it! Maybe next year, except I don’t think my parents will ever attend – or let me attend – a play at your school ever again. I’m not even sure if they’ll let Teddy get involved in theatre since they’re pretty angry with him still (I hope he won’t hate me too much for it), and no matter how many carols I sing at breakfast, and at dinner, and after dinner, they just don’t seem to want to forgive him. In fact, the carols might be making it worse, since they keep telling me to shut it, and the other day Father threw a spoon at me._

_(He missed, so no harm done, I suppose. I’m choosing to think that he missed on purpose, even though he didn’t seem very happy about missing, so who can tell?)_

_Also, Teddy got a pen for Christmas, so they’re clearly not forgetting his misdeeds anytime soon. Hopefully, the leather-bound copy of Shakespeare’s collected works I got him made up for it. It’s about a hundred years old, and it’s pretty heavy – if he threw it at someone, I honestly believe they wouldn’t survive it, except, well, it might be too heavy to throw!_

_As for me, I naturally got a dress. It has three ribbons and the fabric is quite sparkly, but I have a sewing machine, and I’m positive that I can make an eccentric raincoat out of it by January._

_With Love,_

_Lindsay_

_P. S. I am attaching a few pages on marine mammals cut out of one of Father’s books with surgical precision (I know, I know, sorry for the rips, I tried!). It’s a mighty old book, so the drawings are quite ancient, too, which, I have no way of knowing whether it will be satisfactory to you or rather the opposite, but I figured, why not? I would have sent you the whole book, except Father would notice it missing, even though he’s never opened it once, I don’t think. He’s very Jay Gatsby like that._

_*_

_Dear Lindsay,_

_I am sorry to hear about the shoes. I hope that you will at least get to smuggle the boots to school once the break ends and will be able to wear them then, and perhaps one day you will have the freedom to only associate with people who do not judge others based on their footwear._

_As for marine mammals, I tend to avoid playing favourites, but I am quite fond of the killer whales. They are pretty exceptional, and not at all the violent beasts some seem to believe them to be. (Unless it is seals doing the believing – they would certainly be justified in holding that opinion, but whether seals can hold opinions in the first place is another discussion entirely.)_

_I happen to share your dislike of frills attached to skirts, but then, I dislike frills on their own, too. Frankly, I am quite happy with my Wilgefortis uniform, since it is plain and neat, and when I wear it, no one can tell that I could not afford even a button from the other students’ clothes, except they CAN, because I am forever ‘that first-year orphan, you know, the black one.’ I am sorry about you being forced to wear a uniform you dislike. Killer whales are quite lucky, are they not, when they are not living in captivity. Nobody ever forces them to wear clothes that they would rather not wear._

_We do not have to shake cockroaches out of our shoes at the orphanage. There was that time last year when everyone in ours had head lice, and for a moment it seemed like they were going to shave our heads out of desperation, but in the end, they dealt with the problem in a civilised way, thank God. Also, I think what you are referring to is called ‘antennae,’ no? Just imagine a cockroach with antlers. That would be some sight._

_It has just occurred to me that perhaps it is not sufficiently lady-like to discuss one’s past mishaps with head lice. I am sorry if I offended your sensibilities, but I have decided not to cross out that section of the letter. I am not a big fan of self-censoring._

_Perhaps saying so is too forward of me, but, personally, I think that people should not go around throwing spoons at others, even if they do miss intentionally. Plastic spoons would be all right, I suppose, except for the environmental side of things (I am ideologically against plastic). As for your brother, I doubt he would hate you for indirectly hindering his directorial career. For one, it was hardly your fault, and besides, I suspect he will not let anything stop him from directing “Much Ado About Nothing” or whatever it will be next year._

_Good luck with the dress/coat, and, of course, thank you so much for those book pages. They are quite beautiful and very informative, if a bit dated. They are the first proper Christmas present I ever got, do you know? I have gotten some since – most came by post two days ago: a pair of woollen socks from Regina (you met her), a book on the Atlantic Ocean from Aubrey (who co-directed “Twelfth Night” with your brother, even though your brother would never admit it), a pair of blue suede gloves from Jerusalem (Sebastian), cough tablets and some cassette with ‘relaxing whale songs’ from Quickly (one absurd, newsboy-caps-obsessed little man), and a radio from Mr. Kipp (Antonio), so that I would be able to actually listen to it, which was very kind, if a bit excessive. I hope you will not mind me asking; are ALL rich people like this?_

_Ezra, of course, got some presents, too. Jerusalem got him something called ‘a stress ball’, which seems to have angered him more than it has helped him relax, Regina knitted him this lovely blue-brown jumper, Quickly got him a box of paints, Mr. Kipp a set of a hundred shoelaces and a pink feather boa (I did not understand the joke, and Ezra did not seem to understand it himself), and Aubrey ~~~ Now that I think about it, Aubrey only sent a present for me, which is most surprising, since he and Ezra are so close._

_We both got some art supplies from December Graham, too, me and Ezra._

_I apologise if the whole gift inventory was boring, but I never really had a proper Christmas before, and I suppose it has not occurred to me, until now, that it COULD be boring. Again, I am not a fan of self-censoring, so I will leave it be, but I do hope it did not exhaust you too much. As I said, I do not like playing favourites (it does not apply to marine mammals only, see), but I did like your present the most, and have put it somewhere safe. I wish I could get you a proper present in return, but, unfortunately, I do not have any funds at my disposal, so the disclosed will have to do. In case you have not unfolded the second page of the correspondence yet, it is a drawing of you. I have taken the liberty of applying artistic license and drawing your boots the way I imagine them. I think you will be happy to note that the picture includes 0 skirts and 0 frills, crooked as the whole thing might seem. I am quite skilled at drawing dorsal fins, but humans are not my area of expertise. I hope you will forgive me any inadequacies._

_Well. I have just read over this letter, and oh boy, I sound like a sixty-year-old nun, don’t I? I’m sorry. I suppose I wanted to seem smart but, to be honest, it looks like I must seem standoffish instead._

_With Respect,_

_Bessie_

_*_

_Dearest Bessie,_

_That does sound very utopian, being able to wear whatever one wants to wear without anyone taking issue with it! I’m going to wish for it on New Year’s, and perhaps it’ll come true – it will be the new millennium after all._

_God, I hope the world won’t end._

_Please, don’t worry about self-censorship, or being ‘lady-like.’ Clearly, I’m failing at the latter myself, and I think you’d agree that the whole idea is pretty silly anyway._

_(You know, sometimes my parents have grave conversations about me downstairs, and it always takes me a while to catch on that it’s really me they’re discussing, since they always say ‘she.’)_

_And of course I don’t mind you telling me about Christmas presents! I’m happy to hear (read?) that you liked the encyclopaedia pages (a quite shabby present, I realise now), even though you got something as amazing as a radio._

_(ARE all rich people like this? No. Most rich people are way WORSE. I have a friend who got a pony for her birthday, and another who got a YACHT.)_

_Thank you so much for the drawing! It’s lovely, and if this isn’t your area of expertise, then I can’t imagine how beautiful your dorsal fin sketches must be! And do you know what, you actually got the boots right!_

_Oh, and you do not sound like a sixty-year-old nun at all! You DO sound smart, but you sounded smart from the very start (the sarcastic fringehead, and all that), and why shouldn’t you? I mean, you obviously ARE smart, and I think that, one day, people will be saying ‘Bessie Lawrence, that famous marine biologist’ instead of referring to you as a nameless, orphaned first-year._

_I’m sorry for the less-than-impressive length of this letter, but I seem to be coming down with something. I think it’s parents-induced fever. I got used to not having to listen to them, to the point where I’d rather go back to St. Hilda’s and be bullied again than sit here nodding my head as they tell me all about what a disgrace I am. I’m a bit sleepy, hence the ink stains. Please forgive me._

_I’m really keeping my fingers crossed for the upcoming year, you know. Do you have any plans for New Year’s Eve? Where will you be at midnight, Bessie?_

_With Respect,_

_Lindsay_

_*_

_Dear Lindsay,_

_I doubt the world will end. I think we have at least four more decades of this ahead of us – plenty of time to deal with footwear snobs, I hope, though I’m not sure about plastic._

_I hope you won’t mind me admitting it, but I’m not a fan of your parents at the moment. Perhaps I don’t have enough data to draw conclusions, but they seem to be the sort of people who I wouldn’t mind throwing spoons at, and you already know how I feel about THAT._

_Your present is not shabby at all. It was very thoughtful and I’ve discovered that I sleep better after having read through the pages._

_Thank you for confirming the rich-people habits for me. I cannot imagine ever getting a pony, since one would have to feed it, and find accommodation for it, too. Did your friend get a stable to go with it, or did she already have one? As for a yacht, I could certainly use one, since I imagine it would help with sea exploration, but it hardly seems like a practical gift for someone our age._

_See attached: a dorsal fin sketch._

_I like the idea of me being a famous marine biologist, as long as I’d be a good one, too. I am sorry to hear about the parents-induced fever. In case you get other symptoms, I am putting a few of the cough tablets I got from Quickly in the envelope. You probably have medicine at home, but just in case._

_Get well soon, Lindsay. For what it’s worth, I find calling a thirteen-year-old a disgrace ridiculous._

_As for New Year’s Eve, I’ve decided that I’m not going to sit staring at a clock and waiting for fireworks. On the 31 st, I will go to bed early, and I will sleep right through the whole ordeal. See, I hope that when I wake up on the 1st, the world will be a little bit better, and I know that it’s illogical to hope for that, but I simply can’t help it. _

_With Love,_

_Bessie_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! <3


	11. submerged, december 1999 - january 2000

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wherein insecurities are temporarily put aside and a train is boarded after dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi, hello, look, I'm not late after all! The reason for this is actually hilarious because, being me, I caught a cold (not covid!) right after arriving in the city of lights/love/very angry ladies yelling at cashiers in Lidl for no reason whatsoever, and so my 6-days-long trip had to be cut to 2 days...................... and this is not the first time this happened to me, which makes me think that I must have really pissed some travel god off in my past life. Anyway, I'm not complaining, because I still got to go to 4 museums, 5 churches, and 1 cat-equipped bookstore, all for free (they have their own cat!!! And I, the idiot, gasped in surprise when I saw a whole wall of Shakespeare books even though the place is literally called 'Shakespeare and Company' + am now an owner of a beautiful Hamlet edition, which almost makes up for the fact that I couldn't afford Les Miserables.)
> 
> And I saw Lautrec's paintings live!!! I mean, he's one of my favourites and I circled back to him like 3 times ("In bed"! "La Toilette!"). And all. that. Monet. And the sculptures! (though I am a child and kept trying not to laugh at all the proudly displayed genitalia) 
> 
> Anyway, the bottom line is, traveling during covid Bad, even when circumstances sort of forced you :,) 
> 
> As for this chapter, it's short, but it's also all just (subconscious) gay yearning. I feel so-so about the quote and the painting because it's too early in the story to be springing the Jane Austen line on you, but whatever, enjoy!

Marc Chagall, _Between Darkness and Light_

*

If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.

~Jane Austen, _Emma_

*

There are two older women in his compartment, powder caked unevenly around their mouths as they share peanuts, and Aubrey is wringing his fingers, rethinking everything he’s ever decided to do.

“Would you like some, dear?” one of the women says, tilting the packet his way, and Aubrey shakes his head instead of replying. Outside the window, it’s snowing, and he remembers how, just hours ago, his mother knotted his scarf for him, so tight that he couldn’t imagine ever untangling it, and tapped his nose, already red.

 _I suppose it is the new millennium,_ she said, driving him to the station, a quarter of an hour left till the last afternoon train. She put chocolate in the pocket of his coat when whispering a hurried goodbye, and Aubrey considers taking it out to share with the two women, but he’s too scared that it’s frozen solid, or worse, all melted.

He’s going to be ill by the end of the week, from all the hurrying. He knows because one is not supposed to feel the very inside of one’s bones unless it’s the flu.

Well, that, or the nerves. He thinks he’d rather have the flu.

“Hot drinks?” asks the man pushing the trolley down the train corridor, leaning into the compartment.

“Three cups of tea, dear, please,” one of the women says, and smiles when Aubrey sends her a questioning look. “You look like you could use it, darling.”

He _could_ use it.

Once they all have cups in hands, and Aubrey has thanked for his three times, the other woman turns to look at him.

“Where are you off to, then, young man?”

“Bullford, ma’am.”

“Ah, yes,” the woman says, nodding sagely. “You look the type.”

“She means that posh school near the town,” explains the other one. “She means the glasses, and the coat.”

“You do have a book in your pocket, too,” the first one adds, pointing to Aubrey’s copy of _A Christmas Carol_. “I always wanted to go to one of those private schools with pretty windows myself, only there was never enough money for that.”

Aubrey opens his mouth to say something tactful, even though he hasn’t thought of anything sufficiently polite yet when the woman stops him with an outstretched palm and a smile.

“I was never smart enough to get into one, either, so no hard feelings.”

Aubrey sighs.

“I’m sure that’s not true, and half the time, one doesn’t have to be all that smart to go to one anyway,” he admits, blowing on his tea. Not very high-society, that, but then, no one’s hovering over his shoulder, watching. “Usually, money is enough.”

“But not for your school, hmmm?” the other woman says. “There, one really has to be smart?”

“I suppose,” Aubrey says, aware that he doesn’t sound all that convinced. He _isn’t_ – after all, he’s attending Wilgefortis himself, and just look how stupid he can be.

Once off the train, he spends a minute watching the train pull away from the station like a lazy centipede, his suitcase and the other piece of his luggage – a hurriedly wrapped package – at his feet. He considers taking a taxi, what with the late hour, but rather likes the idea of a walk – the longer, the better.

The later he gets to school, the— better.

Walking down a dirt road through fields gone invisible in the dark gets almost poetic once it starts snowing in earnest. Aubrey sneezes, once, and goes on dragging his things and trying not to trip over rocks and roadkill. It’s a good thing he took the last train – even if he wanted to turn back now, he wouldn’t have the option.

He wonders if this, in the end, is what growing up is all about: how, eventually, one starts buying more one-way than return tickets.

Once he reaches the school grounds, he finds the gate open, and thank God. The entrance, too, as if it’s Christmas Eve and not a week later, and December is keeping all doors open for stray guests starved for dinner and warmth.

(Wilgefortis is an exception in more ways than one.)

Inside, everything is changed. Aubrey expected familiar walls, but instead, he’s out at sea, or perhaps already beneath it, more shades of blue than he can process at once all around him, like some wonderful Frankenstein monster of a sky. Somehow, it’s both Monet-fluid and Picasso-fragmentary, broken yet melted, and Aubrey doesn’t know what to do, but the work begs for something to be done about it. It’s how when one enters a church, one’s supposed to cross oneself.

“Who the hell— _Aubrey_?”

For a second, Aubrey is so caught up in the still-rare phenomenon of Easy saying his name that he forgets to wonder why Easy’s voice seems to be coming from the ceiling itself. Then he shakes out of it and stalks towards the scaffolding raised in the middle of the room, shoes sinking into the soft mattresses piled all around.

“It _is_ you!” Easy says, leaning over the edge of the scaffolding, blue paint in his hair. For a second, he looks like he’s part of the painting himself, and then he detaches – leans too far forward and falls

and falls

and falls

and crashes into Aubrey, who crashes into a mattress, springs whining under their combined weight.

“Oh _Christ_ ,” Easy groans into his neck. “I _hate_ heights.”

“Did you—? Are you—? Bones— whole?”

Easy scrambles up and quirks an eyebrow at him.

“How very coherent,” he says dryly, then pats down Aubrey’s chest, as if checking for broken ribs. “I’m fine. What the hell are you doing here?”

“It’s, er, New Year’s Eve.”

“That it is,” Easy confirms, amused, and Aubrey stares up at him and wonders at the blue in his curls. Where did he get it, this blue? Van Gogh blue, Lautrec blue, sea blue, and Easy hasn’t ever seen the sea, has he? He hasn’t ever seen the sea, and yet here they both are, suddenly at its bottom.

“I— don’t know,” Aubrey admits, tilting his head back. What a gift, being submerged without having to drown. “I got you a present of a sort.”

“Oh.”

“Actually, I didn’t. It’s… complicated.”

“How complicated can it be?” Easy says, doubtful, then reaches into Aubrey’s hair and comes away rubbing something between his fingers. “Snow?”

Aubrey wonders what would happen if he were allowed – if he could do the same with the paint in Easy’s own hair.

He supposes nothing would, only it feels criminally untrue.

“So you’ve painted all this?” he says instead, waving his hand at the walls.

“I have been painting all this, yes,” Easy confirms, frowning at him. “There’s still a blank patch on the ceiling.”

“It seems like you’re a bit of a genius, Easy.”

“Have you hit your head?” Easy snorts, knocking on Aubrey’s forehead like it’s a door. “Well, how about you get me this present of mine? It’s already a week late, and all.”

He sounds flippant, but looks awkward, like he doesn’t mean it. Aubrey suspects he doesn’t.

“I think the most efficient way of going about it is if you get off me first,” he suggests, amused. He doesn’t remember knowing it but he must have known nonetheless, on that train: how after a few minutes here, everything would get better. Not better than before, at home, either, just better as a separate thing, if ‘better’ was its own adjective rather than a comparative.

With Easy, it sort of always is.

“Fine, fine,” Easy grumbles, struggling to his feet. He’s wearing a green shirt spotted with paint, at least 3 sizes too big and sliding off one bony shoulder. He has pyjama bottoms on, too, and looks like he hasn’t left the building in years.

Aubrey crawls towards his things and presents the box.

“Sure looks heavy,” Easy comments, clearly tentatively curious.

“It is,” Aubrey admits and watches Easy slowly tear at the brown wrapping paper.

“What am I looking at?” Easy demands once the paper’s off, patting down the black case.

“A safe,” Aubrey mumbles, then clears his throat. “It’s a safe.”

Easy stares at the thing, puzzled, then glances at Aubrey. Then back at the safe, then back at Aubrey, then—

Aubrey knows Easy well enough by now to recognize that he’s chosen well after all. It’s something he spent days – weeks, even – deliberating on, always thinking of Easy with his tendency to hoard things (that sad collection of small objects carefully lined up on his windowsill as if on a museum shelf their first few months at W.) and of his fear of having them taken away, here were older boys convinced they’re entitled to everything don’t much like him.

“The matryoshka,” Easy guesses quietly.

“I hid it somewhere safe, I promise,” Aubrey says hastily. “But this – You’ll get other things, won’t you? Precious things? And so—”

“Ridiculous,” Easy interrupts, tilting his head with wonder. “You’re ridiculous, did you know?”

“Um.”

“I got you something too,” Easy says, straightening his shoulders, strangely formal. “Come on.”

He puts the safe away – pats it twice, too, which is how Aubrey knows he’s guessed right and that Easy likes it – and leads him to the dining hall, where there are Christmas decorations all over the tables, colourful and writhing like tropical flowers.

“Here,” he says, and reaches for a snow globe. “I realise that you’ll be wondering how I managed to get it, but are too polite to ever ask, so let me save you the trouble: I bribed the janitor. _No_ , I didn’t _blackmail_ the man, quit it with the face! I offered to wash the floors for him in exchange for – well, I guess I’m not supposed to admit how much your present cost, but worry not, neither I nor the janitor went bankrupt.”

Aubrey takes the snow globe from him and gently turns it over in his fingers. Inside, there’s a miniature of Eriksen’s Little Mermaid sculpture, and when he shakes it a little, blue and green flakes float around it like the sea itself.

“But where…?”

“An antics store in town,” Easy explains, shuffling his feet. “December took me.”

“It’s lovely,” Aubrey says, tightening his grip on the globe so as not to drop it. He glances over his shoulder to make sure that no one’s about to barrel into him, despite there being no one but them in the room. “Maybe you should keep it for yourself.”

“I don’t want it for myself,” Easy says, eyes gone wide. “I want it for you.”

“Oh.”

“You like that story, don’t you?” Easy goes on. “Andersen? Personally, I don’t see what’s so wonderful about a girl not being able to speak or walk painlessly and then turning into sea foam because of some bastard, but, well.”

Aubrey smiles.

*

Aubrey decided to come back to school early for selfish reasons. It wasn’t because he couldn’t stand the thought of Easy being alone at Wilgefortis – he couldn’t, but he’d never consider himself an adequate remedy for somebody’s loneliness – but because he couldn’t stand the thought of not being here himself on that one day that’s supposed to mean something about all the other 365 days to come.

He doesn’t _really_ believe in all that, of course, but he’s still fourteen, and he decided to allow himself this: asking for a quiet with someone he cares about when all the tv stations and radios in the world are busy screaming. Out here, they won’t see any fireworks, not even if they climb the roof, which they won’t, but fireworks are not what Aubrey wants.

“Bessie?”

“She wanted to sleep through the countdown,” Easy says, turning his hand this way and that, marvelling at the snow. Before, he put on his shoes so fast that they’re from different pairs, one black, one grey – that’s how badly he didn’t want to miss it.

“December?”

“Drinking expensive champagne somewhere,” Easy explains patiently. “She let me try it. _Ew_.”

“How much longer?”

“You’re the one with the watch!” Easy protests.

“Three minutes,” Aubrey says, squinting at his wrist. “Can you believe that somewhere out there, there are people who think the world will end any moment now?”

“Maybe it will,” Easy says with a careless shrug. “What about the countries where it’s already past midnight?”

That, there, is what Aubrey hates about time: how, sometimes, even when something hasn’t happened yet, it already _has_. He’s instantly reminded of that by-now worn, familiar fear of Easy falling off the school walls, even though he’s no longer climbing up them.

One minute to midnight they clink their mugs in a mock toast, snowflakes melting in the carrot juice inside them, and this is what Aubrey wanted so selfishly: for the new year to start like this, and go on so.

He briefly wonders what exactly he’d be doing today if he had never met Easy, and stops right away, loathes the very thought.

“Aren’t your hands cold?” he says, because Easy has no gloves on and keeps catching snowflakes on the very tips of his fingers, startling whenever one lands. Aubrey watches him and wonders what he’d say if he knew he has dozens of them on his eyelashes.

“Mmm.”

“How about you take my gloves?”

Easy frowns at his hands, but won’t look up.

“Then yours will be cold, stupid.”

“How about we share the pair, then? I’ll wear one, you’ll wear one.”

Easy lights up, and Aubrey tugs one glove off with his teeth. As the hand of his watch moves to twelve, he remembers that silly rule about kissing someone when the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve, and he’s in the middle of silently laughing at the notion when he realises that he has his mouth pressed to his one bare hand, in that spot at the base of his thumb where Easy bit him once and where Aubrey still has a scar to show for it.

He immediately rubs at the spot with his finger to get rid of the proof, only there’s no proof. No proof at all. He could—

No proof at all. None at all.

“Happy New Year,” Easy says after downing the juice, and Aubrey presses his mouth to that spot again, telling himself it’s because the skin there feels cold.

(By now, he’s so good at lying to himself that he doesn’t even wonder if he’ll spend the rest of the year lying, too.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the little mermaid snow globe will also be important. I have a thing for Significant Objects, apparently (a common characteristic for us hoarders) 
> 
> Thank you for reading <3


	12. something borrowed, never returned, january 2000

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a missing tie, an uninvited guest, and a resolution

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay guys, fair warning: this is a pretty weak chapter. It's short and nothing all that special happens in it BUT! I have been hit by inspiration and so you can expect a Yante chapter in 1-2 days, which will be criminally dramatic and sort of experimental and possibly posted as a separate part of the story rather than a chapter. I'm super excited about it, so let's hope it comes out like I'm imagining it in my head :,)

Alexander Pope, _The Fox - Fair Game_

*

It is too late to turn you out of my heart.

~Anne Sexton

*

Alfie is not stupid. He _knows_ what he should do. He should forget all about Yante, and burn the damned _Pinocchio_ copy, and possibly move flats. 

Of course, he does none of these things. What he does do is this: he keeps circling back to that café where they first met – something that, he knows this now, must have been carefully orchestrated – and keeps ordering cappuccinos. He likes eating the foam with a spoon and pretending that he’s watching the pigeons pecking at breadcrumbs outside the window rather than spying the café across the road for a man who ruined his life.

Alfie has loved so many people in his life, but he hasn’t loved anyone since— since—

He doesn’t need to be a genius to figure out why.

If he’s being honest, the reason why he can’t just hate Yante and have it be that is because he’s furious with Yante for having done this, but not just to _Alfie_. If he’s being honest, he’s furious with Yante for having done this to the both of them. Those few months they had together (“had” together, really) might have been an act, but they still _were_ , and Alfie doubts even Yante was good enough of an actor to have pretended even in his sleep, burying his nose in Alfie’s hair.

A few days ago, Alfie put all his ties in the washing machine and later hanged them out to dry on a string stretched outside his window. In the morning, one tie – a yellow one with black polka dots – was gone, and Alfie blamed the weather and blamed birds because he wouldn’t dare blame anything (any _one_ ) else. 

He checks the café across the road for the nth time, but nothing. He sighs and doesn’t finish his coffee, to have an excuse to stay that little bit longer.

*

It’s the middle of the night when someone wakes him up by digging a finger into his cheek.

“Yante…?”

“Guess again,” says a voice that Alfie’s fairly sure he’s never heard before.

“I’m calling the police,” Alfie mumbles through a yawn, even though he can’t for the life of him remember where he put his phone, and his ‘guest’ is essentially straddling him, limiting his movements to some panicked arm-waving.

“Oh, shut up,” the woman says dismissively. “So you’re December’s…”

“Friend,” Alfie confirms sternly.

“Oh? I thought dog,” says the woman, then pats him on the cheek, almost hard enough to call it a slap. “I’m October.”

“Mmm, alright, October. My pleasure. Do you always haunt people in their beds like some sort of incubus?”

“Occasionally,” the woman says, flippant. Alfie can almost _hear_ her grin. “You’ve met May, haven’t you? She’s a pretty one, hmm? She’s married, you know, and so’s December. Not very lucky, are you?”

Alfie sighs and tries to rub sleep out of his eyes.

“Whatever it is you’re insinuating, I need tea first.”

Ten minutes later, Alfie is sipping mint tea, and October is opening and shutting his cupboards with evident boredom, like a child that hasn’t ever learned to stay still.

“What’s so special about Monet anyway?” she complains, and settles in the chair opposite to him, curling up like a cat. “His paintings are too _wet_ , if you ask me. Like soggy scrambled eggs, you know? They look like someone sat down on each one before it could dry in peace.”

“Well— I mean— he was an impressionist, for God’s sake—”

“Sure, and the impression I’m getting is that he wasn’t that talented, is all,” October says breezily.

“I hope you won’t think me rude for asking,” Alfie begins, trying to collect his thoughts, “but which side are you on?”

October arches an eyebrow and then grins in an almost greedy way, leaning forward over the table. Alfie would like to be able to say that he doesn’t lean back, but alas.

“Oh, oh,” she says, delighted. “Are you worried I’m here to skin you?”

“ _Skin_ me?!”

October shrugs.

“I _do_ have a knife.”

“ _Christ_.”

“Oh, stop it. Of course I’m on _your_ side. January is a madman, and besides—”

“And besides?” Alfie prompts when she fails to finish the thought. She frowns and starts picking at her sleeve.

“Me and December, we go way back.”

“Oh?”

“Her rags-to-riches story?” October says, eyes flashing. “I was there for the last of the ‘rags’ part.”

“Ah.”

October gets up and opens the cupboard where Alfie keeps all his tea boxes, scrutinizing the shelves with a grimace. She’s quite beautiful, even when scowling, and suddenly Alfie’s whole flat, which he likes to think of as homely, seems painfully inadequate.

“December is a selfish person, you know,” she tells him seriously. “I’m not telling you this to turn you against her, or anything like that. It’s just a fact, only one people forget all the time.”

“Listen—”

“No, _you_ listen,” she cuts him off, whirling around to glare at him. “You’re a librarian with thirty kinds of tea in his flat, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that someone like you can ever be safe after having gotten involved with someone like her.”

“I’m quite fond of occasional detours from my routine, you know,” Alfie tells her calmly once she’s gone quiet. By now, it’s quite clear that arguing will get him nowhere.

“Oh, _are_ you? And how do you feel about occasional _mortal danger_?”

Alfie doesn’t answer that, because if the whole Yante fiasco was like constantly having a knife pressed to his throat, then he’s pretty sure October wouldn’t like his answer.

Still, she must see it in his face, because her eyes widen in recognition.

Then, she smiles.

“ _Splendid_ ,” she says, shutting the cupboard. “Congratulations, test passed!”

Alfie chokes on his tea.

“ _Excuse me_?”

“I hear you’ve met Yante?”

Absently, Alfie wonders if anyone will ever refer to it as Yante having met him instead.

“So I have.”

“That’s what December said anyway, that you’ve met him.” She grins, then pries his mug from Alfie’s hands and shamelessly gulps down the rest of his tea. “But see, what I heard was that you’d _survived_ him. And my guess is – do correct me if I’m wrong – that if you’ve survived him once, you can survive him again.”

Alfie doesn’t tell her that he’s been surviving Yante since April. He doesn’t think it’s any of her business to know.

“Where are you going with this, really?” he says, unimpressed.

“Once we learn where they keep your Monet, I’ll need him busy for a few hours,” she explains, dropping the mug in the sink so carelessly that Alfie’s surprised it doesn’t break. “Properly busy, too.”

“Ah. Look, I’m not sure— I don’t even know how to reach him.”

“Well, of course you don’t!” October says, staring at him like he’s grown two heads. “No one ever knows how to reach Yante, unless he wants them to. But do you know what, there’s a good chance that he _does_ want you to, so I bet you’ll think of something.”

Alfie sighs and finds himself unable to refuse. This, after all, is what he wa— what he’s been wanting.

“And December…?”

October puts a finger to her lips and taps them twice with raised eyebrows.

“So she’s not selfish after all, then?” Alfie says, allowing himself a small smile.

“Oh, she _is_ ,” October laughs, shaking her head. “Don’t be _stupid_.”

Alfie almost tells her that there’s nothing selfish about befriending a stray who looks washed-out enough to be some lost Monet cloud himself, giving him a job, and letting him keep it, but he suspects it’s a lost cause: October looks like the sort of person who’s already made up her mind, and not just about this, but about everything else, too.

Whatever December did to hurt her, Alfie can’t help but wonder if October deserved it.

“Anyway, do we have a deal or not?” she says, hands on hips. Alfie sighs and hopes that the next time he gets an unexpected visitor in the middle of the night, it won’t be her.

*

Alfie is at the café again, and he’s so angry at Yante that he can barely see for the rage. It’s one thing that Yante tricked him, but it’s quite another that he won’t appear and smirk and sit there and let Alfie yell at him for it.

(Not that Alfie would: he’s never been good at yelling, and it’s been so long that he suspects that if Yante appeared now, Alfie wouldn’t have the strength to do much more than just stare.)

(Still, he could use even that – staring at Yante and at his uncompleted puzzle of a face, with no rush to complete it – oh yes, he could.)

In the café across the road, there are no customers with auburn hair, and Alfie downs his coffee, resigned. It’s not that he wants to forgive Yante – it’s that he wants Yante to want to be forgiven.

It’s only when one of the pigeons outside startles into almost-flight at a child’s loud laughter that it occurs to Alfie to look up, and—

He doesn’t see anything up on the roof of that building across the road, no.

He doesn’t see anything up on that roof, but even so, something (some _one_ ) could be there.

Alfie pays for his coffee, leaves a tip, and decides that there’s something consoling about the possibility of being watched – like being cold and without a coat, but knowing that someone else is wearing one, somewhere.

I _have_ survived you, he thinks on his way down the street. I _will_ survive you again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading <3


	13. update

Right, so this is sadly not a chapter. I wish it was, but I have been reminded of how being anonymous on the internet doesn't actually mean much... in any sense at all (comfort, safety, etc, etc) and am somewhat rethinking my "online presence" (I'm probably using this term wrong.... English - hard). Because of that, even though I promised that I'd post another chapter right around now and have it half-written, I am very sorry to say that I think I need a little time before I post anything. By 'a little time' I don't mean a proper hiatus or anything like that, I mean 2 weeks TOPS and then back to normal since, ultimately, whatever happens, this story and especially your lovely comments, brings me so much comfort, and I will not stop writing it no matter what. Still, I felt it would be unfair to not explain the temporary absence when I said I'd post sth so soon, and I don't mean to sound self-absorbed and like I think it will impact you guys in any way if I don't post now, I know it's just some story, but I'd rather assure you of those things just in case and have everything be clear rather than just disappear for two weeks even if it doesn't matter that much. Also, I realise I must sound very dramatic, but it really is just a "due to personal reasons, I will not post for about 2 weeks" update! I will delete this once I post the next chapter, too. Okay, I'll stop rambling now & again, sorry this isn't the update I promised! (please don't feel obliged to react to this in any way, by the way!) And I think it's safe to thank you guys in advance for the understanding, since you're all awesome <333


	14. a letter never put to page, january 2000

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _(Say, Alfie, was it bad luck when I happened to you?)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, apparently I didn't need two weeks to get over how sometimes the internet is scary, hooray. Thank you so much for your comments, I love you all <3 I was going to delete the update chapter, but I thiiink the comments would be gone then, and that's the last thing I want, so I'm leaving it. 
> 
> Now, this is the Yante thing and it was meant to be a separate part of the story but I thought it'd be unnecessarily complicated, so here it is, as a chapter, even though it does nothing for the plot. It's just pining. All in all, I'm quite happy with it, since I wanted it to be a confession of a sort where it just grows more and more earnest -- something Yante would never actually tell Alfie but that he, against himself, thinks at him, and therefore it's first person where Alfie is the 'you.' (I've been thinking a lot about Yante's character and how I'd have to write so many interactions between him and Alfie for him to actually start feeling things but then I sort of realised that that's bs and that he already does feel things -- he's the sort of person who's built this image of himself where all emotions are beneath him, and I sort of forgot that I wrote him that way and that it's not actually true). 
> 
> (Also, please forgive me for how very unrelated this is, but if you're bored, please watch Black Sails -- it's about gay pirates and changing the world and it sure changed my life)

Lucas Cranach, _Adam and Eve_

*

I want to tell me, / I’m never coming back.

~Kayleb Rae Candrilli, _Funeral for a Girl Who Grew Up in the Woods (or, At the Root)_

*

Yes, alright, I’ve stolen your tie. I’ve done you a favour, if you ask me – though I suppose you wouldn’t ask me – what with it being absolutely appalling. Really, you’re better off without it and I’m – _not_ better off with it, not at all, but I have it anyway, and what of it?

What I do with the tie is this: I put it in the strangest places, hoping that I’ll forget it. The bottom of the laundry basket, the cookie jar that hasn’t seen cookies in years, the mailbox stuffed full of grocery store adverts and pamphlets about Jesus – but alas, I always end up remembering it.

The thing is, I don’t want the bloody thing on me. The thing is, I don’t want it _not_ on me either.

(I tried it on the other day, you know? I stood in front of a mirror, even though I hate mirrors, and I tied it and then tightened it and tightened it and kept tightening it until it was like a collar, until it was like a noose. I gave it a tug and wondered if you’d like this: me strangling myself with something I had had no right to take from you.)

(You must think that I hate mirrors because I hate my face, but the truth is, when I look into mirrors, what I see is not what happened to me, but what _will_.)

I’d like to say that I tried to burn the thing, but I haven’t. I’d like to say that I threw it away, but I didn’t. I’d like to say that I’ll return it, but I won’t. Still, don’t you go thinking I’m keeping it for sentimental reasons. No, sir, no, dear, I only took it to spite you and I’m only holding on to it because that’s what we do, no? Think of antlers always displayed on some wall in those old mansions with fireplaces you’d fit a horse in. It’s something a little like that, a remainder of a ‘conquest’ – a trophy, if you will. Perhaps I wind it around my finger when I’m bored and perhaps I laugh at you. Perhaps I put it to my cheek and delight in how I’ve played you. Perhaps I tie it into ribbons, not unlike what I did with you.

Truth is, I’m a liar. I only sleep with the damn thing wrapped around my knuckles, and since I refuse to be that pathetic, I _don’t_ sleep. I sit at night and listen to birds, trying to figure out how many there are outside my window. They’re fucked up, the local birds – all… off. They’re confused by the streetlamps, I hear, and mistake them for dawn. It’s pretty depressing, how they go on singing and singing, too dumb to know that they’re hours early, tricked into praising something that’s not there. 

(You’re a little like that, aren’t you? You think that it’s always alright to give yourself to people, that you’ll never run out of yourself, and _Jesus_ , don’t you see? You should stop thinking of yourself like that: like the world will tire of taking before you’re without anything to give.)

I think you’d hate January, not because of what he is, not even because of all he’s done, but because he thinks that everything belongs to him. I suspect that’s what you hate the most: pointless greediness. A bit hypocritical of you, that, because whenever I touched you, it was pretty greedy of me, but you’d allow it anyway.

(How come? How come you’d allow it?)

Whenever January arranges a meeting with me, he always has his back to the door when I enter. Make no mistake, it’s no coincidence to which I’m attributing false meanings: it’s a careful display of trust, even though, after all these years, I’m still not sure that he _does_ trust me. A statement of a sort, a ‘here, see, I’m vulnerable to you, and if you wanted to hurt me, you could,’ except what a joke, I wouldn’t get half a step towards him with bad intentions without him whipping around. He’s good at hiding it, but whenever he greets me like that – with his shoulder blades almost touching in the middle – he’s a coiled spring ready for movement.

I’m not scared of him and never have been. January is the kind of person who’s made himself into a story, but you know how I feel about stories – you waving your hands like a clumsy attempt at signaling a plane, telling me all about _The Odyssey_ , and me throwing peanuts at you to distract you. Here’s what I always remind myself of before entering one of those rooms where I’ll be faced with January’s back: he wears striped socks, he enjoys ice cream even if he never eats it (he never eats it _because_ he enjoys it), and he dog-ears books because December used to do so, and the habit is one of the few things he has left of her.

(When she left, years and years ago, he would open books one by one, checking for those dog-eared pages, starved for them until I could practically smell the desperate on him, beneath the expensive cologne and fuck-knows-what-else.)

You know how I feel about stories, but I know how _you_ feel about stories, so here’s one for you, Alfie, a late Christmas present.

Once upon a time, I entered a jewellery store with nothing and left it with three fancy bracelets in my pocket, and the only person who realised was the boy across the street. I noticed him because he looked like he hadn’t eaten in days, and one always had to be careful around those – at the time, I wasn’t eating much myself, and I sure was someone to be wary of. He was wearing a black coat, two, three sizes too big, and he had the complexion of someone whose blood couldn’t possibly flow and must have been frozen still. When our eyes met, he mimicked tipping his hat even though he wasn’t wearing one.

I didn’t think much of it, I admit. I figured he wouldn’t follow me, and even if— I knew so many shortcuts, and I was so full of myself, too. Fancied myself the king of the London streets, invincible like one of those film characters who never die. 

Two hours later, I was sitting in a small café with an americano I paid for with money stolen from someone who’d looked like they didn’t deserve to have it, when someone pulled out the chair opposite to me. Yes, you’ve guessed it. I knew you would, Alfie, because this one is a proper story, and well, again, I know how you feel about those.

(You’d like the café, I’m sure. I don’t remember much about it, but I do remember that there were candles on the tables, that the mugs were painted warm colours, and that there were enough carpets inside for one to feel warm even when one was, in fact, cold.)

“Those bracelets,” is what he said, and I squeezed his wrist, hard and then harder. I wanted him to flinch, but he only smiled.

“Easy,” he said, strangely delighted, and then made me an offer. He said, you give me the cheapest looking one, you take the fanciest one, and we both try to sell them. You _were_ going to sell them, were you not? Or did you want them all for yourself? Now, whoever sells his for more money wins the third one.

You’re smart Alfie. By now, you must see where this is going, and I know that you’re wondering why on Earth I’d agree to something like that. Clearly, the boy was trying to nick one of my bracelets for himself, and why should I let him have one, or two, when I could keep all three to myself?

As they say, boys will be boys. I’m incorrigible. I hear a challenge, I can’t walk away from it. I don’t think it’s bravado, or idiocy. I think that, after how I grew up, it’s as simple as bloodletting.

“And if you lose?”

He smiled then, Alfie, a real thing. I’d never seen anything as ugly in my entire life.

“I don’t lose.”

“Come, now.”

“If I lose, I’ll steal you three more bracelets, how about that?”

I toasted him with the last of my coffee, and that was it. We agreed to meet up the very next day, and wouldn’t you know it, he got almost twice as much for that small thing as I got for the most expensive bracelet, the bastard.

“What the fuck do you need the third one for, then?” I asked, tossing it to him. “You’ll sell this one, too?”

“Oh no.” He brought it up to his face, hooked on his finger, and stared at me through it, one eye framed by gold. “This one is a gift.”

He had this strange— magnetism. It’s how gravity works – you don’t think about it, until you do, and realise that you’re not really standing, only hanging upside down over nothing, all thanks to something you never pay any mind.

“Well, this was nice,” I said and moved to get up, only he stilled me with a hand on my wrist.

“Your face,” he hissed, and I wasn’t about to tell him how I’d gotten the scars, no way, but it didn’t sound like what he was after was a backstory, so I sat back down. It was a decision, even if I didn’t know it at the time.

“What about it?”

He tapped his fingers on the table, fast, then faster.

“I could get you a new one,” he told me with a salesman’s smile.

I imagined scalpels, bribed doctors, and blood.

“Could you now?” I said, doubtful.

Scalpels were _not_ what he’d meant.

“You could be anyone,” is what he told me, and isn’t that how all stories start? Tell me, Alfie, isn’t that how they all begin? There is no story without change, and there’s no change without someone tempting you with a ‘you could be something other than this.’ Maybe it all goes back to the snake and the apple, maybe it doesn’t, but one thing’s for sure: in the end, most of us end up biting. 

“No offense, but—”

“I meant it when I said I don’t ever lose,” he said in that silky voice of his, like water slipping through rocks. “You think I could nick something the way you did? No, I’m no good at stealing.”

I considered him, and suddenly, I could see it, how he thought himself a prophet of a sort, and how, ridiculous as it was, perhaps he had reasons to think himself that.

“So what would you have done, had you—”

“I _told_ you,” he said, and let go of my wrist. “I never lose.”

He said it, and then he touched my scars, tracing them with his finger like they were roads on the map of somewhere he was idly considering going. I’m not sure why I let him instead of breaking his hand then and there. I think it was the puzzle of sitting there and wondering, what else can he do?

“Here’s the thing,” he sighed, tapping my cheek with two fingers. “What I have planned for you – and yes, I have already made plans – I’m sure it’s so much more exciting than whatever you have planned for yourself.”

I’m sure you regret it now, but you _have_ met me, Alfie. I’m sure you’ve guessed that I didn’t have _any_ plans for myself. I recognised what he said for the challenge it was anyhow, and I nodded, his fingers still on my scars.

(Do you know when you really became a problem, Alfie? It was that evening you got home late because of the rain and saw me there, seated at your table and laughing at the newspaper yet again, drawing nooses around the necks of the politicians caught mid-word in the photos. It wasn’t the first time I’d broken into your flat, and it wouldn’t be the last, but it was different to the other times, singular. That day, you hesitated in the doorway and stood there watching me for a moment, strangely relaxed, as if you’d figured out a puzzle and could finally rest.

The way you touched me when you crossed the room, Alfie. You didn’t trace the scars, and you didn’t trace the skin between them – no, you weren’t picky like that. Instead, you touched my face all over, like there were no territories there, in the fucked-up geometry of what you didn’t know had happened to me. It wasn’t the first time you touched me like that, but it was the first time it was that deliberate – if it had been a film scene, most would have called it heavy-handed.

I don’t know what I hate you for more – for doing that, or for what you said next.

“Do you know,” you said, “sometimes I think you only ever break in here because you wouldn’t bear having to face how you’re welcome here, and what it means that messing with my lock is not necessary at all.”)

*

I first saw you through a pair of binoculars. I was watching _her_ when you entered her office and lingered, a ghostly thing, a bashful thing, a skittish thing. Do you know how sometimes you take a step towards birds pecking at crumbs and it startles them into flight? I imagined you would startle, and so I wanted to take a step towards you, and so I _did_. January, he’s grown to be efficient, and it took a little convincing for him to let me— But see, even after all this time, he tends to spoil me, even though he dislikes it when things spoil.

(He’s a strange compromise between self-indulgence and self-discipline, January – he’ll allow himself the pleasure of toying with people, and he’ll steal things he doesn’t need or want just for sport, but he never stretches to relieve muscle ache, and never enjoys his meals.)

I suppose I was— not taken with you, no, just surprised that someone could be like you – a message written down in pencil the tip of which had barely touched the page, rubbed blurry. I wanted to decipher it, then tear the whole thing to shreds, tear _you_ to shreds, only – and I wonder if you find this amusing – I never quite managed to do either, I’ll admit.

You went on being a surprise too – how you’d only break when one barely touched you, how you’d never break when one touched you to leave a mark. I’m a cruel person (by others’ standards, anyway, since the word doesn’t mean much to me), and yet I felt uneasy when you preferred being handled like a piece of furniture rather than a soft thing.

(do you still prefer it, I wonder.)

I know that you still want to know where I come from, and by _God_ , do I hate what it means.

(Because it does mean something, doesn’t it, when one wants to trace something to its origins, wants to know how it came to be. If I were a thing displayed in a museum (oh, I’m far from it, aren’t I?), I’d be one you’d linger around, reading up on it and imagining its creation, like trying to glance over your shoulder but back into my past.

It’s funny how legends sprout from such small things – I could tell you all about my scars, I _could_ , but I’m sure even you would find the story disappointing. What happened to me was nothing that hadn’t happened a million times before – that it made minced meat out of my face that one time? Bad luck.

(Say, Alfie, was it bad luck when I happened to you?)

*

He wouldn’t let me meet her at first.

He wouldn’t even _tell_ me about her at first. It took months. I’m surprised it didn’t take years _._

When he finally introduced us, he brought me to the abandoned warehouse they temporarily ‘lived’ in. She was wearing one of his shirts the way you’d wear a dress, no trousers, and I remember wondering – but no, at the time, I’m sure they hadn’t even kissed. She took one look at me, cocked her head, and asked January if I could paint.

“Fuck no,” is what I said. She didn’t bother looking at me again, no lingering on the scars, no furtive glances, only turned on her heel and started walking away, stepping over rubble.

“He can steal,” January said in that silky voice of his, and she stopped mid-step.

That night, as she told me all about how Monet was the only person she’d never met who understood the sun, she struck me as many things (selfish, aloof, hungry for something that wasn’t bread), but she never struck me as someone you’d end up being friends with. Funny, that.

“The reason why I don’t like this place,” she said at some point, staring at the wavering flame of a cheap candle, “is not that there’s no electricity or running water here, or even that there are rats. I only hate it because all the walls here – the ones that aren’t in pieces – are bare.”

Christ, Alfie. If only you knew –

~~Thank fuck that no one knows that the one thing I hate my own place for not having is something (some _one_ ) that it’d never had in the first place. ~~

*

Here’s the thing: no, no one ever explained to me what _love_ was all about. No one ever _showed_ me. But Alfie, believe me, even if someone had, it wouldn’t have taken. I was made for sharper stuff. It’s not that my parents failed by never trying – they succeeded by recognising that there was no point in trying in the first place. It’s rotten, my family’s blood, always has been. My father pisses murder, and my mother cries hate, and once, I bled all things vile. There is no reason to feel sorry for me, and this is what I most despise you for: how you were always, _always_ patiently waiting for what you imagine is a sob story of a sort, how your hands would always jerk slightly, forever ready to frame my face and make better this hurt that I had never even felt in the first place.

I’m not worthless because someone decided it for me when I was too young to know better, Alfie. I’m worthless because it’s what I decided for myself, and screw you for thinking you could trick me into forgetting it.

Me and January, we have this policy of never discussing the before. We started with those three stolen bracelets (and I bet you that if you searched December’s things, you’d find the one we didn’t sell), and we never mention how we got there. I wish you’d see me like that, as someone who began in that café where we met, but I get it, I really do: if you did, I wouldn’t be anything worth looking at.

*

“If I kissed you,” December said to me once. “How angry he’d be.”

If I kissed you, I thought when I saw you first. How angry she’d be.

*

Tell me, Alfie, what is she doing letting you get involved? What is she thinking in that head of hers? What are you thinking yourself? I wish someone would remind you that you’re meant for complaining about too-soft pillows, and reusing old teabags, and re-shelving books, that you’re meant for being _safe._ Already, your matchbox of a flat is a deathtrap of a sort, when you think about it – full of things to trip over, full of hard edges to walk into, full of things to break into pieces that would scatter sharp. Already, your matchbox of a flat is a deathtrap, and there she is, shoving you at the world, and there you are, not resisting it in the least, and here I am, thinking about it and poisoning myself with things that never happened, getting drunk on the ones that _did_.

Know this, Alfie: I’m a bastard, I’m a fraud, and were January to tell me to kill you, I think I would.

I think I would, but Alfie, that doesn’t mean I’d like it, not at all, so please, the next time you decide to face the world, linger in front of your door, remember how I used to kiss lines from Woolf’s letters to Vita into the skin at the back of your knee and how, later, I still turned out to be a cruel lie, and, for the love of God, _reconsider_.

But enough of that, now. Do you know, I’ve been so good at reassuring everyone – you, January, December – that I don’t care about you one bit, that I seem to have forgotten to leave myself time for reassuring myself of the same.

The joke’s on me, Alfie: if you were a message in pencil, I’d be able to rub you out of existence. Instead, you’re a blot of ink, and I’ll never be rid of you, which is only fair, seeing as I brought you on myself without anybody’s help. Still, I don’t blame myself for remembering you – who could forget the way you stared at the ocean that time in Norfolk? If Monet was the only one who understood the sun, I don’t think there’s anyone but you that understands the very edge of the world and how it tastes of salt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


	15. lying by omission, march 2000

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a brief phonecall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a pretty short chapter but after one about Sparrow the next is going to be looooooong.... super long and full of Aubrey and Easy. The most important chapter in year 2 part, in fact. 
> 
> Also, remember how I said part 2 would be shorter than part 1? Ha, those were the days... but we /are/ near the end of year 2 because I'm biased when it comes to seasons and so I put all the things I want to write about in the autumn months and then after New Year's it's just... now what? maybe no one will notice a time skip? (no, I don't like spring, yes, I might be evil). (I have an outline for each part of the story and normally each chapter has like 5 points but this one had only 'phonecall' so I had to improvise)

Claude Monet, _Lilac Irises_

*

"Spring," they call her,

I call her solitude.

~Anna Akhmatova, _Second Dedication_

*

“Really? No news?” Aubrey’s mother asks teasingly over the phone. “Nothing at all?”

*

Aubrey climbs up onto the roof and almost falls off it when he sees that someone’s already there and that it’s not Treasure.

“Oh-oh,” the woman says with raised eyebrows. She’s quite beautiful – caramel-coloured locks and eyes like a line from an old poem and a smile like a threat. “I’m sure that’s not allowed.”

Aubrey decides to act like he belongs here, and takes a seat a few feet away from her.

“May I ask who you are, Ma’am?”

The woman smiles, staring out over the school grounds.

“Worry not, I’m supposed to be here,” she tells him. “Unlike you, I bet.”

“Well.”

“October,” she says after a moment of silence and extends a hand. Aubrey only hesitates for a second before shaking it.

“One of Mrs. Graham’s friends.”

“Oh, we’re _not_ friends, me and her,” the woman laughs. “We just occasionally leech off each other, see.”

“Is now one of those occasions?”

“Yes, yes, how _boring_. She’s got everyone wrapped around her little finger, doesn’t she, your Mrs. Graham. I wonder that it’s not crowded there.”

Aubrey almost leaves it be.

“Well, she’s had to work at it, hasn’t she?”

_Almost._

The woman grins.

“I’m sure you think she has no idea you’d ever climb up here, but I bet she knows,” she half-says, half-sings. “Now, what kind of teacher would allow that?”

“A bad one,” Aubrey admits.

“Oh?”

“I don’t much care what kind of a teacher she is,” he explains. “That’s not what I’m here for.”

“Not for education, you mean?” the woman snorts.

“No.”

“Oh, you’re one of _those_ ,” she says, nose wrinkled in distaste.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“Those that would pay to go to that museum where they have nothing but a few of that Monet guy’s water-whatevers.”

“ _I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers_ ,” Aubrey recites with a smile.

“Christ,” the woman groans. “In that case, I say I’ll make you very happy, and soon.”

Aubrey raises an eyebrow at that but she only smiles and presses a finger to her lips.

“So long,” she says, and then she’s off. Aubrey scrambles forward to watch her climb down but by the time he gets to the edge of the roof, she’s nowhere to be seen, as if all she’s been nothing but a trick of light all along.

“ _Light is the most important person in the picture_ ,” Aubrey says to himself and almost dares wrap the blanket Treasure left up here around his shoulders.

*

“Nothing at all,” he affirms, his fingers shaking around the phone.

“Really?” his mother asks, disbelieving.

*

“You can trust her,” a blond woman in expensive clothes tells December Graham emphatically in the entrance hall. “I’m vouching for her, and so _you can trust her_.”

Aubrey lingers over the spilled contents of his bag and prays that no one will crouch next to him and offer to help him.

“But can I trust you, May, is what I wonder,” December says, grim.

“Oh, dear.”

“Oh, dear, indeed.”

“Everything I ever did to her was because of you,” the woman says, firm. “This, too, is something I’m doing to her because of you.”

“Yes, I understand—”

“And so you _can_ trust her, and so you _will_ trust her, and so I consider this conversation _over_.”

A moment of silence.

“This isn’t like you.”

“It isn’t, is it?” the woman admits, voice like bells. “So long, Dee. So long.”

*

“Nothing at all,” Aubrey insists. “I mean it.”

“Well, alright then,” his mother sighs and Aubrey wonders if she’s frowning. Don’t be, he thinks helplessly. Imagining her, seated on the floor of their corridor and winding the landline cord around her finger, almost brings tears to his eyes.

“Mum,” he says, stupidly.

“And your friends? How’s… Jerusalem, was it?”

*

“When it’s spring, I’m going to eat the whole world,” Jerry says, spinning in place with outstretched arms. Aubrey watches her and wonders how come the newsboy cap hasn’t fallen off her head yet. Spring is but a few weeks away, and he doesn’t like suddenly having reason to dread it.

“You’re going to eat the whole world?” he repeats, dubious. “What does that even mean?”

“I don’t know!” Jerusalem admits cheerfully. “I want to learn how to dance salsa, and I want to learn how to pilot planes, and I want to overthrow the government.”

“Are you sure the government is bad enough to deserve the overthrowing?”

Jerusalem stops spinning and stares at him with her head cocked to the side.

“Aren’t they always?”

*

“She’s fine,” Aubrey says, brushing fingers through his hair. It’s greasy, even though it’s not allowed to be. He’s been studying so much that he’s forgotten about other things, but that’s a mistake – one is supposed to make an effort without looking like one’s making it, and what would his father say? “She’s herself.”

His mother laughs, delighted.

“What about Kipp? Regina?”

*

“You went on a _date_?” Jerusalem screeches, shaking Regina by the lapels of her blazer.

“Mmm,” Regina hums, expression as close to a frown of distaste as Aubrey’s ever seen it. “I think it’s time to end it, only I’m not sure how.”

“You mean we’re breaking his heart at last?” Kipp says, delighted. He, Aubrey, and Jerusalem are crowded on one of the school windowsills, with Easy, Quickly, and Regina standing over them.

“How about you just tell him you hate his guts?” Easy says without looking up from his homework. It’s spread open on Aubrey’s lap and Easy’s leaning over it, correcting spelling errors as Aubrey prays that his knee doesn’t start jiggling.

“Not nearly dramatic enough!” Jerusalem protests. “Oh, there he goes.”

“How about we abort the plan?” Quickly says, craning his neck to spy Jonathan Small in the crowd. “I reckon it’s not too late yet.”

“It _is_ too late,” Jerusalem argues. “They’re practically dating.”

“Wouldn’t a kiss do it?” Kipp says with a sly smile.

“You mean I should break his heart by _kissing_ him?” Regina says, staring at him.

“Not _him_.” Kipp tilts his head and extends a hand. “How about it?” His smile turns soft.

“Oh.”

“ _Oh_ ,” he repeats, grinning up at Regina.

Easy’s pen stills on the page and Regina glances over her shoulder to where Jonathan seems to have just spotted them.

Aubrey doesn’t bother watching Jonathan’s reaction. Instead, as Regina cups Kipp’s face with her hands and leans forward to press their lips together, he searches the crowd for Lavinia.

Kipp and Regina smile at each other with a fondness Aubrey doesn’t understand, and, on the other end of the corridor, Lavinia drops a book and storms off without bothering to pick it up.

“Good thinking,” Jerusalem says as Kipp squeezes Regina’s hand, then whistles. “He looks like the world has ended.”

Easy wordlessly resumes scribbling something in his notebook and, all things considered, Aubrey finds the press of the pen through all those layers somewhat grounding.

*

“They’re well,” he reports. “They’re close.”

“Oh! Are they dating?”

“No.”

“Hmmm. Are you?”

“ _No_.”

A pause.

“I see,” his mother says lightly. “And Francis?”

*

“Aubrey,” Quickly says, strangely serious. “I think you should rest.”

Aubrey smiles up at him.

“I’m fine.”

“It wasn’t a suggestion,” Quickly sighs, then gently folds Aubrey’s copy of the _Aeneid_ closed. “I only framed it as one, for your benefit.”

“How kind of you,” Aubrey says, wry.

“You only get snarky when you’re sleepy,” Quickly says, with enough tact not to sound smug about it, and places a mug full of steaming liquid next to Aubrey’s notes. “Herbs.”

“It’s only seven,” Aubrey complains, pressing his hands to the notes so Quickly won’t fold those closed too.

“Yes, but you haven’t slept last night, have you?”

Aubrey wonders how Quickly would know that, since he and Easy spend their nights at the library, and Quickly always seems to sleep through it when Aubrey sneaks out after midnight.

“I can tell,” Quickly scoffs, and taps the skin beneath Aubrey’s right eye with two fingers. “If you don’t sleep, your brain will eat yourself.”

Good riddance, Aubrey thinks, petulant, but ends up drinking the herbs.

*

“I think he’ll end up being a doctor,” Aubrey tells his mother and can’t help a smile. “Just don’t tell him, or he’ll lose it.”

“I do hope he’s taking care of you kids,” his mother says, and he can almost hear her own smile. “And what about the little one?”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, don’t play stupid,” she says fondly. “What about little Ezra?”

*

“He breaks three chairs the same day the two of them kiss in front of him…” Easy says, lazily swinging his legs where he’s climbed the kitchen counter. “You do the math.”

“Math isn’t really my area of expertise,” Aubrey says, searching for a sharp knife so he can make a proper ginger tea.

“All I’m saying is, what if he breaks Kipp’s nose?” Easy says, inspecting his nails. He always has paint there these days, cuticles coloured purple, blue, and red.

“You don’t sound too concerned,” Aubrey notes, amused.

“I _am_ concerned, but it’s not like he doesn’t deserve it,” Easy says with a careless shrug.

“He deserves a _broken nose_?”

Easy arches an eyebrow at him.

“It is _Kipp_ we’re talking about.”

Aubrey stops rummaging for a knife, and thinks about it: how, for over a year now, they’ve been hating Jonathan, and will it really pay off? Regina breaks his heart, he breaks furniture – what will get broken next?

“I wish he’d die already,” Easy says, perfectly casual, as if he’s remarking on the weather, and Aubrey turns to stare at him. Easy glares. “Oh, _what_? Do I have to censor myself now?”

“No,” Aubrey says carefully as his hand closes on a knife. “I myself wish he’d never existed in the first place.”

“But isn’t that the same thing?”

“Is it?”

“Well, one’s easier on the conscience, I suppose,” Easy says with a challenging smile. “More innocent, mmm?”

Aubrey sighs and starts cutting the ginger root into slices.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never imagined him hurt,” Easy goads, and Aubrey tries not to remember all the cruel things Jonathan said to Easy and how the effects are still visible after all this time, like ripples spreading on water.

“He broke _your_ nose, so I say he deserves anything I’ve imagined him suffering, and then some,” Easy says and Aubrey’s hand slips.

“Oh,” he says, dumbly staring at the blood welling up in the cut. “He _almost_ broke my nose.”

“Jesus,” Easy groans. “Put it under the tap, will you?”

He jumps off the counter and moves to stand behind Aubrey, his chin on Aubrey’s shoulder as they both watch the blood trickle. Aubrey wonders if he’s standing on tiptoe. He must be.

“Perhaps we can do without the ginger,” Easy says. He sounds angry, and Aubrey almost starts apologising, except when he turns his head, it’s not him Easy’s glaring at. Instead, Easy is glaring at the knife itself, with the kind of intense hatred that Aubrey hasn’t seen on him in months.

Don’t, he wants to say. It’s just a tool.

Don’t, he wants to say. Isn’t it exhausting?

It occurs to him that perhaps it’s time he stopped pretending Easy doesn’t care for him, but he knows the thought won’t stick.

*

“He’s…” Aubrey tries, unsure of how to finish.

“Himself?” His mother guesses.

“He’s…”

Aubrey struggles to come up with something like ‘well’ or ‘alright’ but the only word that comes to mind is ‘important.’

“Yes,” he says finally, trying to think of an excuse to end the call. “He’s himself.”

“And Mrs. Graham?” his mother prods. “How is _she_?”

*

“Don’t you think echo fascinating, Aubrey?” December Graham says, stirring his tea for him. “You yell at the world, and sometimes it yells back. It’s hard to feel insignificant in the face of it.”

“I’ve never thought of it like that,” Aubrey admits, wondering why she’s called for him.

“No, you wouldn’t,” she says and laughs when he fails to fully conceal his frown. Usually, he’s better at it, but Quickly’s right: he hasn’t been sleeping. “It’s a compliment.”

“In that case, thank you.”

She smiles, amused.

“I’m about to try something soon, Aubrey, and I’m counting on the world echoing my hopes back at me,” she tells him, enigmatic as ever. “Wish me luck?”

*

“I miss you,” he says instead of replying. Again, he hasn’t been sleeping.

“Don’t,” his mother says, somewhat sternly. “There’s no use in wasting your time missing me.”

Later, he wastes time missing her till dawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the museum in question is The Musée de l'Orangerie and boy, am I happy I could enter it for free because as much as I love Monet, it is just the 8 water lillies paintings... Like, I /really/ love Monet but am also a poor student :,)


	16. a study in amber -- interlude, summer 2006

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> she who must not be named

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a very short chapter!! I'm sorry :,) But the next one will be loooong, promise!

Gustav Klimt, _Mother With Two Children_

*

What’s a bruise

but a testament to the sharp art of surrendering to time and place?

~Amber Dawn, _The Stopped Clock_

*

The frame might not be fit for Sparrow’s painting, but he keeps it anyway and stares at it whenever Lei’s not there to be judgemental about it.

Lucjan Myrta and his _amberpol_ – how extraordinary. Sparrow knows all about amber in general and knows all about the Baltic amber specifically. It comes with the—

He’s not sure that he likes it – something that used to be liquid and then went hard. It makes him think of endings, and he has quite a few endings behind him to think about.

One day, January will regret ever thinking that he could have Sparrow for a toy.

*

He doesn’t give Maureen Barkley the chance to try and kiss him again. He keeps his distance and plays hard to get skilfully enough that she can’t know he means it, and it’s risky, sure, but it’s less risky than having her lips press against his again, like the past is a bruise that hasn’t faded yet and she’s prodding it with a finger.

“I know that she gets almost all of her paintings legally,” January says patiently in that impatient way of his when Sparrow visits to report. “It’s the ‘almost’ that interests me.”

He suggests a game of cards, and Sparrow agrees, because maybe if he loses a few times, it will never occur to January that he’s underestimated Sparrow.

“She’d get angry at me whenever I won,” January says conversationally as he considers his cards. “Of course, I’d always win, so she learned to prefer solitaire. Quite fitting, wouldn’t you say?”

His eyes come up to meet Sparrow’s own, like the lunge of a knife.

“Whatever are you talking about?” Sparrow mumbles, turning his head to look out the window. It’s a comfort of a sort to glimpse the buildings on the other side of the street: there’s a world out there, and it goes on, ignorant of the little tableau that January has arranged so carefully inside his office.

“December,” January explains, smile spreading soft like the arrival of a new season. “I’m talking about _December_.”

Sparrow knows better than to look around in search of a knife, but oh, how he _wishes_ — He’ll have something to fantasize about later, then, a pale neck splitting like fruit skin.

Absently, he wonders if the reason January didn’t say ‘Graham’ is that he still thinks of December as his, something on loan and long overdue, soon to be returned or wrestled away.

(What a wonder, all things considered, that, after all these years, Malcolm Graham still lives.)

“I’d prefer not to discuss her, if it’s all the same to you,” Sparrow says, schooling his face into an expression of polite indifference. 

“I’m afraid it’s not all the same to me,” January retorts with a raised eyebrow. Suddenly, it occurs to Sparrow that January must be the kind of person who peels apples so carefully that the skins trail to the ground and never break. “See, I think we’re on the same page when it comes to her little experiment of a school, but December _herself_ …”

January believes that Sparrow hates December Graham, but he’s never voiced the conviction, and so Sparrow has never felt obliged to correct him.

“You’re quite angry with her still, aren’t you?” January guesses, voice almost teasing. He places three cards on the table, a movement so controlled that they don’t even rustle.

Sparrow _is_ angry with December Graham, but it doesn’t mean much, because, frankly, he’s angry with the whole world.

“Aren’t you angry with her yourself?” he asks, curious. He’s sure that January considers anger beneath him, but here he is anyway, keeping Sparrow all for himself, and out of spite.

A grin. “Oh, but I’m full of forgiveness.”

(The thing about forgiveness is that, were Sparrow to meet December Graham now, he’s not sure who’d be offering it.)

“Are you sure she’d _want_ your forgiveness?” Sparrow says, resisting the urge to fan himself with his cards. It’s not hot in the room, not really, but he feels like he’s breathing through a sheet, as if the air itself is on January’s orders.

“Oh, my _dear_ ,” January whispers, leaning forward with a smile that’s all delight. “It’s never been about what she _wants_. With December, it’s always been about what she’s able to _take_.”

*

They never get visitors, so when someone knocks on the door, Sparrow chooses to ignore it and continues rearranging Lei’s bone angels.

Apparently, August interprets it as an invitation to pick the lock.

“Soon, you’ll end up just like me,” he announces once he’s crossed the room to hover over Sparrow. It’s early evening, and he doesn’t reek of cigarettes yet: a new record, and perhaps congratulations are in order, but ‘congratulations’ is such a long, tedious word.

“Pathetic, you mean?” Sparrow guesses. “Miserable? Ugly?”

“Hated,” August – _Yante_ – says, unimpressed. He _prefers_ Yante, a little rebellion that January trusts him enough to overlook.

Sparrow himself doesn’t trust Yante, not when Alfie Rose is still alive, and that’s where it gets complicated, because Sparrow _wants_ Alfie Rose alive.

(He considers telling January that Yante is a liability daily, but he’s pretty sure that January would only point out that Sparrow might well be a liability himself.)

“How come you’re not grey yet?” Sparrow says with a sweet smile. “Grey _and_ bald, for that matter.”

Yante is unchanging – all these years, and he still looks like a blood spill.

“I’ll never go grey,” he says with a sharp smile. “You’ll kill me first.”

Sparrow doesn’t kill, but he _has_ entertained thoughts of pushing Yante off buildings. _If you can’t trust them, you can’t keep them_ , January told Sparrow once, as if blessedly unaware that there was no one in the whole world deserving of Sparrow’s trust.

 _If you can’t trust them, you can’t keep them_ , only for January trust matters only when he thinks someone is at least as smart as him, which is never. For all his caution, January might just be the most reckless man Sparrow knows.

“I’ll never be like you,” Sparrow tells Yante with a wide smile, “because I’m not a walking pendulum.”

He made a decision ages ago, and he’ll stick to it: it was resin back when he first thought it, in the streets and chewing on his sleeve for lack of anything better to chew, but the moment January introduced himself, it turned amber.

“Do you remember how we met?” Yante says, nudging Sparrow’s ankle with his foot.

Sparrow sighs.

“How could I ever forget?”

He _does_ forget, sometimes, because even if Yante was the beginning, Sparrow’s life, even after all this time, restarts with someone else.

“What did he do to piss you off, anyway?” Yante demands, lighting a cigarette.

“He talked to me about December Graham,” Sparrow admits. “I wish he’d die already.”

Yante is quiet for a moment, the cigarette caught between his lips as he grins in that sad way of his.

“She’d have you, you know,” he says at last, through smoke. “She’d take you in with open arms, even now.”

Sparrow doesn’t much care if December Graham would have him – he’s spent years accepting that he may never know if he would ever have _her_ – but he knows this much: she wouldn’t take him in with open arms, because one of her arms is not, and never was, meant for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When we went to the coast this year, there were amber... vending machine? thingies all over the place. You could have one for 5 zlotych, which equals a small ice cream cone, or a small cappucino, or 1/8th of a book. The question is, is it worth it?


	17. war reparations, april 2000

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> where debts are collected and the world almost ends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning for... uh... I'm very bad at this... okay, there's some violence in this chapter, but it's not very graphic? 
> 
> please, do suspend your disbelief for the duration of your reading of this chapter. 
> 
> (actually, please do that with all the chapters)

Alissa Kim Tjen, _Abraham and Isaac_

*

If you don’t have blood

on your hands by the end of this you weren’t

listening.

~Shira Erlichman, _Ode to Lithium #75: Mind over Matter_

*

It’s not something that lets itself be smelt on the air, not at first. April, Aubrey’s mother told him once, is when the world puts on one of its best dresses and spins.

This year at Wilgefortis, April is more rain than not, and Aubrey has to wipe his shoes on grass before scaling the school walls to join Treasure Little up on the roof every time, so as not to leave traces on stone.

(“Doesn’t it taste sweet?” Treasure says once, and it takes him a while to realise that she means the rain.)

It’s not something that lets itself be smelt on the air, but Aubrey can feel it coming all the same: an almost-ache, like when people know to expect storms by the ringing in their bones. There are other tells, too, October to be spotted somewhere on the grounds more often than not, and the woman December calls May joining her every now and then, spotless white gloves on her hands as she presses a finger to her mouth and a lipstick that doesn’t smudge.

“Visitors every day, mm?” Kipp says one day, watching the two of them disappear inside December’s office. “Do you think she’s buying another painting?”

Aubrey knows that December is _something_ a painting, but buying isn’t it.

“You’re staring,” Regina tells Kipp, tugging on his hand. They haven’t exactly been pretending to date, as such, but they’re awfully affectionate with each other all the same, public setting or not. Aubrey remembers the three secrets Kipp mentioned to him once, and can’t help but wonder if Regina knows any: they’re easy with each other, like there’s nothing one couldn’t tell the other about and, in the last month, Jonathan Small has only smiled when toppling first-years’ soup bowls.

“Of course he’s staring,” Easy says, laid out on the windowsill with his head pillowed on Regina’s lap, something almost pastoral about the tableau. Aubrey stares and wonders how she can stand it: where he’d be all hard lines and held breath, Regina seems relaxed like something hardly corporeal. “He’s nosy, and something is clearly up.”

Something _is_ clearly up, but Aubrey doesn’t think that’s why Kipp is staring. He’s been watching December ever since the beginning of their first year here, regardless of whether she’s scheming or doing something as prosaic like washing chalk out of a sponge.

“I’m telling you, she’s trafficking organs,” Jerusalem says, trying to get her hair to behave. Quickly, who’s holding her hairpins and ribbons for her, is watching it with horror, as though it’s a kraken rather than a few curls dried funny. “There’s always been something odd about this place, and you know it.”

“Certainly,” Kipp says, wry, “but I don’t think illegal kidneys are it.”

“Mm,” Jerusalem nods thoughtfully. “She’s more of a pancreas type of person, isn’t she?”

“Can you even _live_ without a pancreas?” Easy says, skeptical.

Jerusalem gives him a pitiful look. “Do you really think organ traffickers care?”

“One can, in fact, live without a pancreas,” Quickly says, then blushes when everyone turns to stare at him. “I checked, in case a murderer ever sneaked into our dormitory and cut mine out. One ends up developing diabetes without it, what with the sudden lack of insulin-producing cells—”

“Have you considered _all_ the crazy scenarios of terrible things that could potentially happen to you?” Kipp interrupts him, incredulous.

Quickly frowns, seemingly mulling it over.

“Well, I’ve considered _many_.”

“I can’t believe that we attend a school stuffed full of paintings like some art-world _gooducken_ , and you think she’s _trafficking_ _organs_ ,” Easy snorts, rolling his eyes so hard that it looks painful.

“Oh, surely she’s not smuggling _paintings_ ,” Jerusalem says, dismissive. “That’s a little on the nose, wouldn’t you say?”

“It’d be almost clever, though, wouldn’t it be?” Kipp muses. “Like hiding something in plain sight.”

“That only works in films!”

“How,” Quickly says, horrified, “do you know what _gooducken_ is?”

Easy glares at him.

“Well, I do go to school with a bunch of rich kids, don’t I?”

Quickly swallows, face gone white. “I was thinking, veganism.”

“First, you’d have to stop staring at Treasure like she’s a steak,” Jerusalem snorts, unruly curls now completely covering her face.

“Oh, he does _not_!” Kipp snorts. “He stares at her like he’d faint if she let him touch her hand, and like he’d like to build her a house even though he knows nothing about building houses, and like if she decided to marry someone else, he’d smile and feel like an impostor for daring to so much as say ‘congratulations.’”

“Blast, you’re right,” Jerusalem grumbles. “It _is_ a very respectable pining. How disgusting.”

Quickly, in an inspired act of vengeance, drops all her hairpins to the ground.

“Whatever she’s doing,” Aubrey says carefully, staring at the door to December’s office, which, now he thinks about it, is near soundproof, “it’s hardly our business.”

“Oh, but when has that ever stopped anyone?” Jerusalem says, dismissive. “I mean, it never stopped _me_.”

“No, Aubrey’s right,” Quickly says, shooting worried glances at the door. “I don’t even want to know.”

“Yeah, sure, except Aubrey—,” Easy says with an ironic smile, “Aubrey _does_ want to know, don’t you?”

*

It’s not that Aubrey _wants_ to know, although he does. It’s that he doesn’t think him knowing would change anything: always, he’s but the spectator, outside the frame and admiring the painting, and what’s the harm in that?

Even if he knew, it wouldn’t have to change a thing.

*

It’s actually impossible to steal the moon, Aubrey’s mother said once, out of nowhere. Everything else, though? It’s up for grabs.

*

“How has this semester been treating you, then?” December inquiries, pouring him a cup of tea that smells like field flowers. Aubrey stares at her and wonders if what she’s really asking is, how has this semester been treating Easy?

“We’ve been well,” he says, and breathes out in relief when she doesn’t raise her eyebrows at the collective ‘we.’

“You’ve seemed a little down lately, though,” she says, forward as always. Aubrey manages a politician’s smile, aiming for something that his father would award at least a solid 6 out of 10.

“It’s the weather,” he lies smoothly.

In a way, it _is_ the weather, because, in truth, it’s the _season_. He’s dreading it already: how, in a couple months’ time, his mother will kiss him hello and his father will— not.

“Oh, it’s been awful!” December says heartily. “It’s like God is having bladder problems! But do forgive me, that’s a bit… Now I’m trying to think of some metaphor about Biblical floods, but this doesn’t seem very Biblical at all, does it?”

She glances out the window, where the clouds look like something ready to be wrung dry again. “It’s spiteful, is what it is.”

Aubrey doesn’t mind rain, never has. He only minds how fast the grass grows, and how, by the time December pays someone to mow the grounds, he’ll be home.

“Anyway, I’ve called you here because, soon, something important will happen, and you might end up learning about it,” she tells him, hands joined behind her back and head cocked to the side like she’s just asked him a question. “I know that you’re not one for gossip…”

You think I’ll see right through you, Aubrey doesn’t dare say, and you’re _worried_.

December’s smile is so confident that Aubrey’s father would surely give it 10 points out of 10.

“Soon, when it’ll seem like I’m not very trustworthy, please, consider trusting me anyway?”

There’s a fast-approaching date circled in pink on the Alphonse Mucha calendar she keeps on the wall, and Aubrey knows that if he tries to forget it later, he’ll inevitably fail.

He takes a sip of his tea, and December smiles like he’s agreed, because, in a way, he has.

*

It’s one a.m. when they hear car tires on gravel.

“Oh?” Easy says, putting away his copy of _Old Man and the Sea._ He’s been complaining about it for the past hour, calling Hemingway creative names and scoffing at near every paragraph of the thing.

“It’s probably nothing,” Aubrey says, unconvinced. The date on December’s calendar said: 23rd of April, and now it’s come at last.

“I’ve seen it, too,” Easy says, as if he’s read Aubrey’s mind, and then grabs a flashlight. “Shall we?”

“ _Shall we_?”

“You know what this is all about, don’t you?” Easy says, arching an eyebrow. “If they took her, wouldn’t you want to know?”

He points to _Dora Maar au Chat_ , and Aubrey almost says it: don’t, _don’t_.

They end up sneaking through the school, clinging to walls and avoiding moonlight. Outside, they hide behind bushes and watch as December, May, and October stand in a circle and gesticulate. There’s a lot you can learn from gestures: December all pride and purpose, a self-taught aristocracy that Aubrey sees through only because he’s known the real thing his whole life; May, throat bared like no one would dare touch it, all china doll and arbitrator: hands like shadow theatre as she begs the other two quiet; October all anger turned play like a weapon transformed into a flute, and the kind of boredom that’s too careful to be anything other than an affectation.

“I have an idea,” Easy says when all three of them head towards the school. “You won’t like it.”

“I didn’t like the idea of coming here either, but here we are all the same,” Aubrey whispers, careful not to rustle the leaves even though the women have already disappeared inside the school.

“I wasn’t where I should have been,” Easy says, too serious for his age. “I wasn’t where I should have been when he took the Monet.”

Aubrey remembers it: butter slowly melting in tea, Lavinia’s swinging legs, the light that had no business being such a sweet, amber gold.

“You were _exactly_ where you should have been!” he hisses. “Think of what would have happened—”

“I _have_ thought of it!” Easy interrupts him, eyes wide and desperate. “It’s all I _ever_ think about!”

In the end, he doesn’t even have to ask for Aubrey to agree: Not a minute has passed, and they’re curled together in the boot of October’s car, one of Aubrey’s legs trapped between Easy’s knees for lack of space.

*

“Have you ever seen your father unable to refuse me something?” his mother asked Aubrey once, and he knew the correct answer, but he loved her too much to say ‘no’: a refusal in its own right, but, he consoled himself, a much kinder one.

*

“Christ, _screw_ Yante,” December says, voice muffled. “If he’ll be there, I’ll—”

“It’s settled,” October says, louder – she’s the one in the backseat. “I took care of it.”

“Oh?”

“How about we all not think about it for a while?” May says sweetly. “I can put on an opera?”

“I know you have a soft spot for him,” December says, accusing. “It just beats me _why_.”

“Doesn’t your friend have a soft spot for him himself?” May teases. “Perhaps we both see something that you don’t.”

“Alfie only had a soft spot for him when Yante was pretending to be a decent human being, thank you very much—”

“ _Yante_? A _decent human being_?” October snorts. “He’s not that good of an actor.”

“I’m going to explain this to you once, and only once, Dee,” May says, light like glass. “I’m not doing this _against_ Yante, alright? And, while we’re at it, I’m not doing this against January, _either_. I’m only doing this for you.”

“Is that supposed to be a warning?” December says, clearly unimpressed.

“I don’t know,” May says cheerfully. “Does it sound like one?”

“Well, isn’t this just like old times,” October snorts.

“Oh, be quiet,” May says, half-fondness, half-irritation.

“You better drive carefully on the way back,” December snaps on a rough turn. “If you don’t—”

“If she doesn’t, you’ll what?” October says, all fake interest. “Do go on.”

“Oh, Berry, I hardly need defending, but thank you all the same,” May says, clearly pleased. “I _am_ being careful, Dee. I know that paintings mean much to you, and they mean much to me as well, but—”

“—But she’s already being as careful as ever,” October finishes sharply. “What with _you_ being in the car.”

“Why would you let her drive anyway?” December demands.

“She wanted to,” October admits, as if it’s that simple.

“ _She wanted to_ ,” December echoes with horror. “Just like old times, indeed.”

“It’s not my car anyway, so what do I care?”

“Have you _stolen_ it?!”

“I _borrowed_ it.”

“ _Unbelievable_!”

“Quiet now, both of you, or I’m putting on _La Traviata_ ,” May warns.

“I’m going to throw up,” Easy whispers, close enough that his breath warms Aubrey’s cheek. “I’m going to throw up and I haven’t even eaten.”

“It does seem like she’s breaking the speed limit,” Aubrey whispers back. “Whatever the speed limit is.”

The car jumps on a pothole and Easy hisses when Aubrey’s nose hits him in the eye.

“I’m starting to think this was a bad idea.”

“It was _your_ idea!”

“If they find us, do you think I’ll have to go back to the orphanage?”

“If they find us, I think the one called October might just skin us alive…”

(It’s actually not that scary, even though, logically, Aubrey knows that it should be. They met on a train coming to a stop, Easy tripping over nothing and falling to the ground, and perhaps it’s the echo of that moment that has Aubrey calmer than he expected to be: how, now, too, everything is turbulence and quicksand.)

The drive takes more or less an hour, and when the car comes to an abrupt stop, all skidding tires, they both hold their breath. Aubrey, who put his hand behind Easy’s head so it wouldn’t hit the back of the seats, snatches it away.

“How subtle,” December complains.

“Yes, yes,” May says, unperturbed. “You’re staying.”

“That’s _not_ like old times,” December protests. “Why—”

“You’re almost famous now, aren’t you?” October reminds her in a bored tone of voice. “Think of the newspaper headlines. Think of the _children_.”

“It hardly makes a difference, though, me staying in the car,” December argues. “If there are newspaper headlines after this, it’s all ruined anyway.”

“You’re staying,” May repeats calmly.

“I suppose,” Easy mouths, nose wrinkled in irritation, “we’re staying, too.”

Car doors slam shut, and then it’s all wait, the two of them not daring to speak with December quiet in the passenger seat. At some point, she says to herself: “Do you have me where you wanted me now, then, J?”

Aubrey doesn’t count minutes, and he doesn’t count seconds either. Instead, he stares into Easy’s by-now-familiar eyes, and wonders if they’ll surprise him all over again come September.

(Of course, in a way, they surprise him all over again every day.)

Easy shifts and his knee bumps Aubrey’s own. Sorry, he mouths, but it doesn’t feel like he’s apologising for the touch: rather, Aubrey suspects he only moved to have the excuse to apologise for everything else.

He shakes his head and tries a reassuring smile. Easy scowls at him, so, in a way, all is well.

Five minutes later, December leaves the car.

“We have it,” May says outside, barely audible. “I’ve forgotten what a thrill it is, getting to knock people out.”

“Let me see, let me see,” December rushes her.

“It was a bit tricky, but Berry didn’t even have to use a knife…”

“Are we putting it in the boot?” October says, impatient.

The exhale that Aubrey expected to hit his cheek doesn’t come.

“In the _boot_?” December repeats, all disbelief. “No way! You take the passenger seat, and I’ll keep this in the back.”

There it is: a breath.

“Fussy,” October complains.

“I’ll show you fussy!”

“Please, don’t,” October says, horrified. “Don’t ever show me _anything_.”

“Will you both _stop_?” May says, and then suddenly yelps. A squelching noise follows, and then a man almost-shouts, the sound turned into a gurgle as another squelching sound follows.

“Oh God,” May says. “Oh, Christ.”

“Did you have to kill him?” December says, unimpressed. In the dark, Easy’s pupils grow wide, and his breath stutters.

“He was about to _touch_ her,” October says, voice shaking. “ _May_?”

“I’m fine, Berry,” May says quietly. “Thank—”

“ _Don’t_.”

“Whatever shall we do with him?” December says. “We can’t just leave him here.”

“Oh, we can,” October snorts. “You only have to touch him.”

“ _Excuse me_?”

“She’s right, Dee,” May says, apologetic. Next to Aubrey, Easy seems to be hyperventilating. “January’s men will find him and they’ll take care of it. If your fingertips are on the body, he’ll make sure no one will ever know.”

“ _Jesus Christ_.”

“This is what you wanted,” October tells her, unimpressed. “She could have died, all because of your stupid—”

“Oh, let’s not get dramatic—”

“One more word and I’ll kill you, too, December, I swear I will.”

“You won’t,” May says, calm but decisive. “Dee?”

“Fine. Where do I—?”

“Neck, face, arms, take your pick. Don’t overdo it, yes?”

“You have blood on your face, May,” October says. “Here.”

“Thank you, Berry. Now, all ready to go?”

On the ride back, May plays _La Traviata_ loud enough that there’s no chance any of them can hear Easy’s troubled breaths. In the dark, the car shaking like a kicked can, Aubrey deliberates for three or four miles before he dares place his hand between Easy’s shoulder blades. Easy goes rigid at first, but he relaxes before Aubrey can think to move his hand away, and buries his nose in Aubrey’s neck.

He’s warm, and he’s breathing, and he’s there. He’s there, and he’s alive, and Aubrey has never been this aware of someone being the latter before.

“Wasn’t it scary?” he whispers against Aubrey’s skin, and Aubrey wants to nod, but he doesn’t dare move, so he only knocks his knee against Easy’s in the dark.

“Sorry,” he mouths, and Easy exhales like he understands. He fists Aubrey’s shirt, and Aubrey is quite happy about the length of the ride, uncomfortable as it is: happy that they can stay like this for a while.

*

After all three women leave the car to head towards the school – and thank _God_ – it takes them a while to detangle and crawl out of the boot. Once outside, Aubrey grabs Easy’s arm to steady him when he almost trips over nothing, and they don’t bother pretending it’s dizziness.

“I don’t ever want that to happen to me,” Easy says once they’ve climbed upstairs and locked themselves in the bathroom, scrubbing his hands in one of the sinks even though they’re clean. “I can’t have that happen to me.”

“Why would it?” Aubrey says, trying to sound reasonable. He feels anything but. Outside, the moon is swollen like something about to burst, and he finds himself waiting for the shock of an explosion. “It had nothing to do with us.”

“Did it not?” Easy snorts. “I don’t ever want to—”

—be killed, is what Aubrey expects him to say.

“—have to kill anyone,” is what Easy ends up saying, and God, but he’s thirteen years old. Aubrey watches him, all skin gone pale and sweat, all horror-wide eyes, and he finds himself making another promise that he has no way of keeping:

“You _won’t_.”

Outside, the moon seems to deflate, but Aubrey knows better than to think it’s anything other than a trick of light.

*

The next day, Kipp catches Aubrey after dinner, all smiles.

“You look quite tired,” he says, conversational. “Did you not sleep well?”

Aubrey was hoping that the fact that he’d looked like he hadn’t slept well for the past three months would save him from unwanted questions, but alas.

“As well as you’d expect,” he says, trying to sound nonchalant.

“Aubrey,” Kipp says with a fond smile. “I saw you out the window.”

“Excuse me?”

Kipp shakes his head.

“Come sit with me?”

They settle on a windowsill facing a sculpture of Charybdis pre-monster-curse. Outside, the clouds are like cotton candy, and Aubrey refuses to find it symbolic: how today, for the first time in weeks, it won’t rain.

“I woke up at night and you were gone,” Kipp says. “It wasn’t the first time, but it felt different.”

Aubrey’s not sure why learning that Kipp may know about his and Easy’s library nights should make him feel guilty, but it does.

Perhaps it’s not guilt. Perhaps it’s something else.

“Go on.”

“I went to the bathroom and I saw them out the window: December Graham and the other two. I saw you and Easy sneaking into the car, too.”

It does seem incredibly stupid in hindsight: how they dared do that in front of dozens of windows.

“Listen—”

“No, shsh, I’m not going to ask,” Kipp says with a somewhat self-deprecating smile. “Only, I think it’s time I told you one of my secrets.”

They sit in silence for a moment, the quiet disturbed only by the distant sound of footsteps and the echo of laughter.

“You don’t have to,” Aubrey says carefully.

“I want to,” Kipp insists. “You don’t remember it, but we met before Wilgefortis, you and I.”

Aubrey has tried to remember it, combing his memories for something like Kipp, but to no avail.

“I don’t remember it,” he admits.

“Well, perhaps calling it a meeting is a bit of a stretch,” Kipp says with a grin. “I only remember you myself because you were so out of place there… No, it wasn’t a _meeting_. Rather, we were like ships passing in the night.”

Aubrey snorts and shakes his head.

“If that were the case, we wouldn’t be friends now,” he argues. “Well?”

“It was the auction,” Kipp says. “ _Dora Maar au Chat_.”

Aubrey exhales. He still has that damned train ticket. Still has the London map, too.

“You were this ridiculous thing, gawking at everyone and too small to be there all alone, but all alone all the same,” Kipp tells him fondly. “You were wearing a hideous jumper and corduroys. You never went in.”

“That’s— unexpected.”

“That I find your jumpers hideous?” Kipp says, arching his eyebrows. “I haven’t exactly been hiding it.”

“ _The auction_ ,” Aubrey clarifies, rolling his eyes. “That you were there.”

“I didn’t want to be,” Kipp says with a careless shrug. “My mother took me.”

“Why is it a secret? You could have told me.”

“That’s not the secret,” Kipp says with a wry smile. “Not that I was there.”

“Then?”

“See, if we’re sticking to the ships metaphor, everyone there was SS _Californian_ to my Titanic,” Kipp tells him, swinging his legs lazily. “Everyone but her. She was my RMS _Carpathia_.”

“You’re being very dramatic,” Aubrey scolds him fondly.

“Well, of course I am! Have you met me?” Kipp says with fake offense. “Anyway, I was bored, and upset, and I kept fidgeting, and so I got lost in the crowd. I couldn’t find my mother, because she was wearing a coat that was just like everybody else's, so I ended up sitting next to a column and crying, and _God_ — all those people, chatting about nothing, adjusting their pearls, adjusting their watches, maybe they’d care if they bothered glancing down, but they didn’t even _see._ ”

He smiles, more bitter than Aubrey’s ever seen him.

“And then she kneeled in front of me, all undignified, tights on the carpet. She said hello, and told me that her name was December, and what was mine? I was such a mess that I couldn’t even remember, so I only said, December like the month?”

Aubrey can’t help a smile.

“She asked me my name again, and then she asked me for my mother’s name, but I couldn’t remember anything but the coat. I did tell her about that, and she promised that we’d look for my mother together, but wouldn’t I like to help her buy a painting first?”

Aubrey finds himself holding his breath.

“My own mother – and I don’t hold it against her – had forgotten all about me, and so when December won your painting, I was the one holding up the bidding paddle.”

Aubrey feels something that’s not quite jealousy, but close to it. A less ugly feeling, because he’s glad for child-Kipp, he really is, only he remembers that day all too vividly, how he spent hours outside the building and couldn’t see a thing.

“I understand,” he says.

“No, you don’t,” Kipp insists, suddenly serious. “I love her.”

Aubrey stares.

“No, I _mean_ it. I _love_ her,” Kipp assures him, left hand pressed over his heart, the right raised like he’s taking an oath.

“Kipp,” Aubrey says slowly, “she’s over thirty.”

“Not like that,” Kipp snorts. “Well, alright, a little like that, but she’s married, and yeah, she’s over thirty. All I’m saying is, _I love her_.”

“Kipp—”

“Unconditionally.”

“ _Kipp_ —“

“ _Uncontestably_.”

Aubrey gives up and finds himself laughing.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Tell me if there’s something to be worried about?” Kipp suggests. “After yesterday?”

“No,” Aubrey tells him, and it’s not really a lie: after all, when October killed that man, it was technically already today.

*

“She gave it to me after classes,” Easy tells Aubrey that night in the library. “All wrapped in three layers and ‘please, don’t ask me how.’”

“Jesus.”

“It has a _scratch_ ,” Easy says. “She _apologised_ to me for it.”

“ _Jesus_.”

“I suppose the safe will come in useful.” Easy shrugs. “Let’s never do anything like this again.”

“Let’s,” Aubrey agrees, and then glances at Easy’s hands. He wonders how come someone this small is worried about having to kill one day and decides that, for all the world’s cruel sense of humour, this _is_ the one thing they’ll definitely avoid: Easy’s hands are not made for bad things, only for painting and for being—

For _being_.

Uncontestably.

*

Aubrey will never ask December Graham if a painting really is worth a life. Instead, he looks at _Dora Maar au Chat_ and asks himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think that this isn't the first time I've used the three-bird roast in a metaphor, and that's terrifying because the three-bird roast should /never/ be used in a metaphor, but what can I say, I write the word 'stuffed', I think 'birds.' It is what it is :,)
> 
> I almost, almost used that Richard Siken quote that goes "you're in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won't tell you that he loves you, but he loves you" for this chapter but my first reaction to the idea was laughter, what with them getting bruises in the boot because May drives like a drunk, so I'll leave it for the future, I guess 
> 
> OH, AND! the most important thing! Kipp might be ~in love~ or something close to it, but it's 100% one-sided, will not last in such form, and just, there'll be no pedophilia here, promise


	18. a snare, april 2000

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which Alfie turns the tables

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alternately: the one where I almost wrote a sex scene. No, really, it almost happened, and then I was... me. But this story will have to have a few of those sooner or later because they will be..... crucial to the plot..... (i know how that sounds, bear with me) so let's hope I'll learn how those work in the next few months (ok i know how they work but growing up christian in poland does things to one's brain ok, i see a word that describes genitalia and i either start laughing like a 12-year-old in or start reading articles like "how joining a nunnery saved my life") (a small heads-up, this, but worry not, I'll include very awkward content warnings once we actually get to that!) 
> 
> Um, this chapter is very short but I really really don't want to add to the wordcount of part 2 too much, I just kind of want it over and done with because year 3....... oh, year 3, how I can't wait. Actually, I have this dream that by Christmas, we'll be halfway through year 4 and I think that this is achievable for two reasons: a) part 3 will be really short, and b) I /really/ want it. And who cares about uni, riiight. 
> 
> Also, a small announcement: the next chapter might take me up to two weeks because I really, really need to reread everything i've written for this story so far before I even touch it, since it will have Important Things in it. I'll try to get it up asap but hfbrghiush I've read a blog post by my favorite author that literally changed my life and the way i think about writing (not that it'll impact this story much but i just need to.... relearn breathing and think about how words work for a few days i guess) and life has been weird and I /really/ need to reread this or I'll mess up character development and then where will we be? Please consider checking out the Halloween monster one shot I posted 2 days ago in the meantime and don't get scared if you see my blood and tears somewhere between the paragraphs there. (Whoever invented Octobers is evil.) Now, I'll stop boring you with notes longer than the chapter itself! See you soon <3

Giuseppe Maria Crespi, _Cupid and Psyche_

*

never forget that softness is strength, unflinching

against the knife and it is also the knife.

~Jess Rizkallah, _Ghada says_

*

What Alfie did was simple: a post-it note on his fridge, a yellow one.

Dinner on Sunday?

He’s not sure how he knows to expect Yante on the 23rd. Yante still breaks into his flat sometimes, and he doesn’t exactly hide it – a washed mug on the drying rack, a note slipped into the book Alfie had been reading the night before, one less yoghurt in the fridge – but it would still have to be an acknowledgment of a sort, him showing up.

And then, he might think this is a trap.

 _Do you think_ , Alfie wonders, leafing through that copy of Pinocchio that Yante left him, _that I’m capable of traps?_

But then, of course, it _is_ one.

On Sunday, he cooks. He follows some complicated recipe and almost messes up three times. He doesn’t play music, but he still misses the sound of the turning lock. He smells Yante first, even though the kitchen is all garlic and thyme: cigarettes, winter, and blood. Alfie spins around and there he is, leaning on the doorway, a two-day stubble on his face and his hair a mess, like he’s brushed his fingers through it in frustration or— or.

“How unexpected,” Yante says, arching an eyebrow.

“Sit.”

Yante rolls his eyes. “Yes, sir.”

The food is ready five minutes later, and when Alfie places a plate in front of Yante, he makes sure it’s soundless.

“So what is this about then?” Yante says, poking a piece of aubergine with his fork. “Are you going to wine and dine me and then knock me out with the empty bottle?”

Keep him at yours’ till morning if you can, October said, and Alfie can do this. He _can._

“There’s dessert, too,” he promises sweetly.

Yante leans back in his chair with a wolfish grin, and there’s something starved about it, but a different sort of starved than Alfie remembers from before: like it wouldn’t take a lot at all to get Yante to start begging for something, but what?

He almost, almost doesn’t want to know.

“Worth getting killed over,” Yante swears after having tried the food, hand folded over where his heart is, and Alfie remembers the spot. He used to put his head there sometimes, cheek presses to Yante’s chest. He’ll never put his head there again.

“You don’t believe I could ever kill someone,” Alfie says. “You never have.”

“Maybe I’m starting to.”

“You’re not,” Alfie argues, but there’s something about Yante’s eyes— If he didn’t know better, he’d call it sadness.

“My, my, it’s like you’re getting cheekier every day.”

“Eat,” Alfie says sternly. “I don’t actually want to talk to you.”

Yante cocks his head.

“Oh? Why invite me here, then?”

Alfie grins.

“ _Eat_.”

Yante looks like he ought to, anyway, shirt loose on him and his cheekbones sharper than Alfie remembers, and oh, Alfie remembers them well.

He remembers everything so well.

Once they’re done with dinner, Yante folds his cutlery and flashes Alfie a brilliant smile.

“My compliments to the chef,” he says, a bit of sauce in the corner of his mouth. It’s drying there, and Alfie will deal with it later. He’ll deal with it soon.

“Don’t you think it’s funny,” Alfie says, “how all it took to get you here was one post-it note?”

Yante watches him, expression unreadable.

“Not _that_ funny.”

Alfie pushes his chair back and rounds the table. He stands behind Yante and gives himself a minute to stare at where Yante’s hair has grown almost long enough to brush the back of his shirt collar. He gives himself a minute to stare at the mole Yante has there. He gives himself a minute to stare at the knob of Yante’s spine.

He grabs the back of the chair and tugs, legs screeching on the floor, until Yante is a few feet away from the table.

“Oh?” Yante says, amused. “How unexpected! Now what?”

“You know,” Alfie says, walking around him to crouch in front of him, “you don’t look so well.”

“And yet you did fall in love with me at first sight,” Yante points out. “I guess there’s no accounting for taste.”

Alfie huffs, exasperated, and reaches out to grasp Yante by the wrists. He blinks up at him, and once, he would have thought that having to look up means that he’s not the one in charge.

Once, he would have.

“What are you doing, then?” Yante demands, no grin. He’s no longer amused. Now, he’s just impatient.

Alfie smiles. All this talk of how it only took one conversation for him to fall head over heels, all this talk of how Yante tricked him—

“You said I was a delight,” he reminds him. Yante glares at him, clearly uneasy, and Alfie did this, because Alfie _can_ do this, and oh, but what does it mean?

Why, he just can’t wait to find out.

“I said a lot of things,” Yante complains, trying to tug his wrists free. Alfie’s sure that he could do it, too, if he made an effort, but it’s like he’s too resigned to really bother.

“If I’m such a delight,” he says, slowly bringing one of Yante’s hands to his mouth, “then how about you stop talking and be delighted?”

He presses his mouth to the inside of Yante’s wrist, and Yante doesn’t make a sound, but his pupils go so wide that for a second Alfie can’t see, and only remembers, the colour of his eyes. He feels Yante’s pulse stutter against his lips and he smiles at how it speeds up.

“I thought you had…” Yante says as Alfie climbs in his lap. “Principles.”

“ _A conscience is that still small voice that people won't listen to_ ,” Alfie whispers in his ear. “I did read it, you see.”

Yante makes a choked sound.

“That’s not like you,” he manages.

“Reading?” Alfie laughs.

“The… the conscience bit.”

“I know, but see, it’s just that you’re my guest, and I wouldn’t want to be rude,” he says, sliding his fingers into Yante’s hair and giving it a tug. “After all, you haven’t even had any wine yet.”

*

Later, Yante sleeps with his cheek pressed to where Alfie’s heart is no longer hammering in his chest, and Alfie draws patterns on his back with the very tips of his fingers.

It’s done, October told him on the phone ten minutes before, December hissing something in the background.

 _But this isn’t_ , Alfie thinks as Yante makes a mumbling sound but doesn’t wake. Outside, it starts raining, and Alfie thinks, but we’re inside. We’re inside and the world is out there, and we’re _here_.

“What’s happening to you?” he whispers, remembering how, earlier, Yante’s skin was all goosebumps. The skin below his eyes is dark and the fingers of his left hand are curled loosely, a not-quite-fist on Alfie's sternum.

He still hates Yante. He _hates_ him. He decides to be kind anyway and kisses the crown of Yante’s head, and it _is_ kindness, because it’s something Yante would never accept when awake but it’s also something that, Alfie is beginning to understand, he might just need all the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading <3


	19. pieces, august 2000

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wherein Aubrey falls apart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, I'm so sorry for taking so long but I was trying to reread this monster and uh.... managed to get through part 1 :') Also, ngl, this was probably the hardest to write of all the chapters, not because of the chapter itself, but because elections and stress and so on. (I'M NOT EVEN AMERICAN, I KNOW, but first there was UK, then there was Poland, and it just.............. anyway, if anyone here is from the US, I'm sending you hugs <3) (also, I've refreshed the stupid color map so many times today that I'm pretty sure I know the location of every state better than I know Poland's voivodeships by now, which is worrying on so many levels). Anyway, the next chapter will be up in a week's time tops but probably sooner and will be the very last one for year 2! 
> 
> Speaking of years, there's a bit of a time jump here. I basically skipped to August because I really really need to start year 3 (which will have 9 chapters, is my prognosis) instead of lingering here. It's definitely abrupt, so sorry for that! 
> 
> Also, warnings: there's some not-okay logic in this chapter in terms of abuse, but I'll explain below the chapter so as not to spoil things. Also, WARNINGS because ummm very unhealthy behaviour and bad coping mechanisms and all that. This is one of the angsty ones. (which I apologise for!) 
> 
> Finally, the painting for this chapter is The Goldfinch because it just fits you know? But I actually kinda hate the book (Donna Tartt's book I mean). Though, in all honesty, it also has traumatised boys obsessed with art, so you know, I should love it? (I just prefer the secret history, can't help it).
> 
> Okay, time to shut up

Carel Fabritius, _The Goldfinch_

*

They fuck you up, your mum and dad. 

They may not mean to, but they do. 

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats, 

Who half the time were soppy-stern

And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

And don’t have any kids yourself.

~Philip Larkin, _This Be The Verse_

*

“…And I had to disinfect the seats in the train because it was second class, since I’m not some spoiled—”

“Mhm,” Jerusalem interrupts, stuffing a biscuit in Quickly’s mouth to shut him up. “Have you written Little Treasure a letter yet?”

Quickly chews for a while – knowing him, the advised thirty-two times – and then frowns at her.

“Of course I haven’t,” he mumbles. “That’d be creepy!”

“ _Creepy_?” Kipp repeats, dubious. “How would it be creepy?”

“I’d have to know her address to send her a letter,” Quickly explains with a shrug, like it should be obvious. “It’d be creepy if I knew it.”

“People know each other’s addresses, Quick,” Kipp tells him with an amused smile. “Nothing creepy about asking for one.”

“We’ll see her in September, won’t we?” Quickly says evasively, staring into his tea. “I got into, like, herbology.”

“You what?”

“Herbs!” Quickly says, flushing a bright red. “Forget it.”

“I wish Easy was here,” Jerusalem sighs. “It’s boring when I can’t laugh at anyone.”

“You’ve been laughing at us for the past three hours, though,” Kipp points out.

Jerusalem sighs and puts the back of her hand to her forehead like she’s dying of consumption. “It’s just not the same.”

Privately, Aubrey agrees. It’s Saturday, and they all met up in London after weeks of phone calls, because _we’ll go to Hyde Park, AA, and think of all the bookshops they have there, and what about the museums?_ Aubrey spent his summer making sure not to commit any sins his father would see all over him, reading law books, and studying, so this morning’s train trip was exciting enough to make him think of it as an _adventure_ , and how pathetic. He’d shared his sandwich with an elderly man who was reading _The Age of Innocence._ ‘It was all about propriety, back then,’ he said to Aubrey with a sad smile, sliding a bookmark between the pages even though he only had three of those left. ‘I like it better now when kids can just marry whoever they want,’ he said, and Aubrey didn’t correct him, and didn’t tell him that he’d cried reading _The Age of Innocence_ either.

They had plans – the Golden Boy of Pye Corner, the Charles Dickens Museum, some graffiti that Kipp just _had_ to see – but, in the end, they all got to London around noon and had but a few hours to spare, so they went for a walk and then got coffee instead.

‘Coffee’ being tea and juice.

Aubrey stirs the milk he’s poured into his Earl Grey and wonders how he’s supposed to go back home after this.

“We should have visited him or something,” Quickly sighs, tearing at a napkin.

“We couldn’t have,” Kipp points out. “That orphanage of his is literally in the middle of nowhere.”

In the middle of nowhere, Aubrey thinks, blinking at his tea. In the middle of nowhere, but Easy comes from _some_ where, and he’s headed somewhere, too.

“We should have recruited Lavinia,” Jerusalem whines. “Doesn’t her father sell cars?”

Kipp’s eyebrows shoot up. “He does, yes, but I doubt it translates to Lavinia driving them, seeing as she’s fourteen.”

“Details, details.”

“She doesn’t talk to us anyway, does she?” Quickly mumbles.

“She only doesn’t talk to me,” Regina reminds him. “Though I suppose, by extension…”

“I’ve never noticed her acting like she’s in love with Small,” Jerusalem says thoughtfully.

“Anyway, Easy!” Kipp says, clapping his hands once with a crooked smile on his face. “Let’s not tell him about this, mmm?”

Aubrey blinks at him and doesn’t understand at first. The summer has been a kaleidoscope of unmet expectations, longing for the past, and longing for the future while stuck in the present, duck soup for dinner every fortnight and letters from Jerusalem pouring out of the mailbox but nothing signed “Bye, Ezra Weiss.”

“You think he’d be upset we met without him,” Quickly guesses.

“I don’t think so. I _know_ so.”

Lies, lies, lies. Lies by omission, still lies, and Aubrey doesn’t know what he’ll do in September because he’ll have to say ‘hello’ to Easy like the well-adjusted boy he is, only he hasn’t been all that ‘well’, and as for ‘adjusted’…

“Let’s not,” he agrees.

“Man, I hate this,” Jerusalem sighs. “Shall we all shake on it?”

“I don’t like this,” Quickly says, fingers tightening on his mug.

“You think _I_ do?” Kipp says lightly and then extends his hand. It’s less aristocratic a gesture than Aubrey would expect of him, and he reaches out to clasp it, like they’re betting on something. He only hopes neither of them will lose.

*

He catches a train back home around four in the afternoon, his shirt sticky with sweat and his bag stuffed full of boxes of tea he’d never get anywhere at home.

He took a book with him, of course he did, and he tries to read it but it’s _Franny and Zooey_ and he’s clearly not doing it right, because there’s Franny, with her existential crisis, and Zooey is there, too, to make it all better, only Aubrey reads, and reads, and can’t see it. Outside the window, the countryside is beautiful but Aubrey thinks that he liked the city better: how, if he were to play hide-and-seek somewhere, that’s where he’d be most likely to win. 

And if they can’t tell Easy about having met without him, doesn’t that mean that they shouldn’t have met in the first place?

Aubrey barely remembers late spring. It was studying and studying and studying, and dreading summer, and trying to think it all away. When they were saying goodbye on the train in late June, Easy pulled his newsboy cap low over his forehead and told them all that he wouldn’t miss them, which, in Easy-speak, meant that he would, and now here they were, missing him right back but not enough to bear missing each other, too.

(What Aubrey would like most is to be able to stretch the autumn months like putty until they’d go on forever, all Shakespeare, no fear of goodbyes, and fireplace-coloured leaves in his friends’ hair.)

When he gets home, he finds the front door unlocked, and slips in quietly, hoping his mother won’t ambush him with all her ‘how was it’s and ‘how are they, then’s. He wants to go up to his room, shut the door, and sleep through the rest of August, undisturbed by the smell of birds’ blood, the rustling of law articles scattered all over his bed, and the tomb-like quiet of their mausoleum-like house.

But alas.

The door to the drawing room is ajar, and he hears raised voices from the other end of the hall.

“And when is he supposed to be home, then?”

“Oh, I’m not sure, in an hour or so?”

“Why would you let him go without my permission? He’s supposed to have read the books I gave him by now and I was expecting an essay on one on my desk this afternoon.”

A pause.

“Mmm, sure, dear, but don’t you think that’s a little ridiculous?” Aubrey’s mom says with a note of amusement. “He’s a teenage boy, surely—”

There’s a slapping sound, and it echoes too much, and it doesn’t echo as much as it should.

Aubrey stands outside the door, doesn’t burst in, holds his breath, remembers the confident way his mother slings rifles over her shoulder, and surely, she’ll say something?

“You will not speak to me like this,” his father says, not loudly, just coldly. No, not coldly, just— dead.

And surely, she’ll say something?

A loud swallow.

“Of course, dear,” Aubrey’s mother says, brightly, but not brightly enough to aggravate. “Truth is, he didn’t actually want to go.”

“Oh?”

“You know Aubrey, he’d rather stay home and read, but I pushed him,” she says, flippant. “I worry he doesn’t have enough friends.”

“Of course he does,” Aubrey’s father grinds out. “We’re dining with the Murrays tomorrow, aren’t we? He and Patrick’s boy will study together in but a few years…”

“Yes, he’s been excited about that,” Aubrey’s mother says smoothly, and what?

“Then perhaps he shouldn’t be distracted by childish escapades, don’t you think?”

Footsteps, footsteps, and Aubrey hides behind the door like a coward, holds his breath until his father has walked past.

He tries counting to ten before entering the room, but he doesn’t really remember what comes after one.

“You’re back,” his mother says once he walks in, the tips of her fingers pressed to her cheek. The room is cold, all dark greens and ebony, and it’s all wrong because Aubrey likes to imagine her in meadows, and not here. Not like this.

“W-why did he…?” Aubrey stutters, wanting to go to her, too scared to do so. “Why did you…?”

His mother smiles patiently, folding her hands in her lap.

_The thing with boats is that once you get on, you can’t exactly get off._

“Why are you _smiling_?” Aubrey chokes out with horror.

“I didn’t want you to see that,” she says, apologetic.

Aubrey’s seen her compliant. He’s seen her respond to his father’s anger with politeness. He’s seen her bite her tongue over and over again.

He’s never seen an imprint of a hand on her face before.

“I don’t understand,” he mumbles. “You’re not _like this_. You’re _strong_.”

He thinks of the world, of how day comes after night, and how night comes after day, and how sometimes there are murmurations of starlings in the sky, and how this world – this vast, scary thing – is something his mother would readily gobble up, so why this? Why the darkened rooms and this almost-story that writes itself like a version of _Bluebeard_ too boring for print?

“You said it yourself,” Aubrey whispers hopelessly. “You said he couldn’t shoot a bird if he _tried_.”

What he’s trying to say is, why are you letting him do this, when you could not let him do this?

“Yes, but, Aubrey… I tried teaching you, but you couldn’t shoot one either.”

The room spins for a moment, then rights itself.

His mother gets up and crosses the room, glances out the window where the sky looks polished, like something even Aubrey’s father could never find lacking.

“And?” Aubrey asks, his voice trembling. “Why should I have to—”

“When he gets like this, I’d rather he took it out on me,” his mother explains, her face reflected in the window, eyes meeting his.

“ _No_ ,” Aubrey whines. “That’s _unfair_.”

“Aubrey, honey,” she sighs. “We both know you don’t want to be a lawyer.”

He stares at her, startled. “It doesn’t matter,” he says carefully because there’s no point arguing, is there?

“Does, too,” she insists. “We’re both going to be good and we’ll trick him, _don’t you see_?”

“ _Excuse_ me?”

She smiles. “I know that you think your father doesn’t respect me, and perhaps you’re right, but don’t make the mistake of thinking he would have let you attend Wilgefortis if it hadn’t been for me.”

Aubrey stares at her, because, well, that’s exactly what he thinks. Thought. Thinks. _Thought_.

“I could stand up to him, but what for?” she continues, unfazed. “It’s all or nothing, Aubrey. We’d have to walk away, and this is better… He has money, he has connections.”

Aubrey doesn’t understand, and then he _does_.

“It _doesn’t matter_.”

“Use what we have here as a trampoline,” his mother says, drawing the curtains. “Where you land after the jump is up to you.”

“H-how long have you—”

“Always,” she laughs, turning around to face him. “Can I tell you something?”

Aubrey stares at her until she nods, taking his silence for a yes. She spreads her hands, and he struggles to recognise her.

“When people decide to have children, they start planning. They think, I’ll paint their bedroom pink and read Winnie-the-Pooh to them, or they think, I’ll paint their bedroom blue and read Sherlock Holmes to them. They build a child’s future before they can watch their present, furbishing it according to their tastes: I’ll teach them kindness like this, I’ll teach them self-confidence like that, I’ll send them to school there. It’s not always bad, and it’s rarely malicious, but it _is_. All those parents, decorating somebody’s future life like they would a house instead of letting it unfold…”

Aubrey watches her, remembers that Earth spins incredibly fast, and wonders how come he can suddenly feel it.

“I love you for all the things you are, Aubrey, but I never wanted you to be smart, or handsome, or charming, or even good,” his mother tells him, eyes boring into his, left cheek flushed a lovely red that would look like shyness if someone painted her profile. “I only ever wanted you to be happy, and safe.”

“N-no—”

“ _Yes_ ,” she insists. “There’s nothing else I expect from you and nothing else I expect from the world, but don’t think I’m not greedy, because I _will_ have it for you, or else.”

Aubrey stares at her, and wishes for the controlled chaos of Dora Maar, and not _this_. This is just _pieces_.

“You c-can’t decide all this for me!” he says, horrified. “You can’t just— why would you—”

“I can, too,” his mother says, and it’s kind rather than defiant, more apology than reprimand. “I’m your mother.”

“I don’t want this!” Aubrey protests, trying not to, not to _yell._ “If we’re only stuck here because of my future prospects, then let’s pack up and—”

“And what about your school?” she challenges. “What about how I don’t have a job?”

“ _It doesn’t matter!_ ”

“Aubrey,” she says, sterner now, eyes all steel. “It’s me who decides.”

He stares at her for a moment, trying not to tear at his hair.

“Fine, then,” he snaps, resignation flooding him from the inside. “Just remember that you’ve decided this all by yourself.”

“Aubrey—”

“No,” Aubrey says, his voice too shaky for how it’s only one syllable. “Just, no.”

He leaves, and climbs upstairs, and locks himself up in his room. He pushes a chair against his door even though it makes him feel silly, and then he tumbles into bed, and everything is wrong, wrong, _wrong_. He presses his face against his pillow, and he doesn’t cry, but he does sob.

He spends forever turning over, trying to crawl out of his skin and out of this life which his mother _has_ furbished for him no matter what she says, and he can’t believe he didn’t get to see Easy in London, only what the _fuck_ does Easy have to do with this except for—

_Oh._

He stretches out on his back and, slowly, closes his teeth over the bite mark Easy left at the base of his thumb almost two years ago now. He presses on the skin until it hurts, and it helps, like when ships— like he’s not drifting— like an _anchor_ — and maybe he could, maybe he could just bite through skin and maybe it would help, only, no, no, no, he can’t, because what if he’ll change the mark and it won’t be all Easy anymore? He can’t, no way, and so he just lies there with his teeth pressed into the skin but not too deep and drifts and drifts but doesn’t, and there’s still a sea, there’s still an ocean, but maybe he’s on a boat—

Except it’s vile, what he’s doing. It’s vile, and disgusting, and _wrong_ , and he’s not sure why, but he’s sure that it _is_ , and so he should _stop_ , but if he stops, he’ll just fall apart, and scatter, all confetti, all pieces, and no Picasso to fit it back together into something clumsy but worthy of a frame.

He drifts off (ha) at some point, dreams of standing in front of the closed door of his father’s study with a knife in his hand and never doing anything about it, not even wanting to, just trying to want it. When he wakes in the middle of the night, sweaty and confused, both too cold and too warm, he automatically brings his hand to his mouth, but then he remembers that he _can’t_ , that that just won’t do, and so he bites other things instead – bites the tips of his fingers the way Easy does sometimes, bites the corner of his pillow, bites his lip until it’s all copper and until he exhausts himself into a few more hours of restless sleep.

In the morning, he makes a choice.

He gets dressed, a shirt, a jumper, no wrinkles. He cleans his glasses. He ties his shoes. He stands in front of a mirror, his lower lip split and caked with flakes of dried blood. He tries folding his upper lip over it and hopes his father won’t notice.

(His mother will, but, as of yesterday, that doesn’t matter, so it’s fine. It’s fine. It _is_.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it weird that all these 14/15 years-old kids were allowed to just head to London on their own for the day? I honestly don't know. As for the practical side of things, I do think they could all do it if they got up early since England is small enough, but I have no idea how fast trains actually were back then............. (they're fast now but are they ever on time? nope, not really) 
> 
> That bit where Aubrey says sth like 'but you're /strong/' as a response to his mother letting his father treat her like shit! Not okay, women in those situations /are/ strong no matter how they react, but, you know, he's a messed-up kid, so he's gonna think some messed-up things every now and then 
> 
> Aaaand! At some point in the near future, I will spoil the entirety of Fitcher's Bird here since it's super relevant, just a heads-up 
> 
> Thank you for reading <3


	20. hello, dear, dearest -- interlude, early winter 2004

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> another never sent letter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, so this is criminally short and I'm sorry, but! in my defense, it's been a crazy week. I mean...................... Trump! Biden! Nevada! Pennsylvania! Putin! Destiel! Uni! Fanfics about Tony Stark being my only coping mechanism even though I didn't know who Tony Stark is two weeks ago and have never seen a single Marvel movie! Crazy times huh. Also, this chapter is pretty much a continuation of that letter near the end of part 1 and there are some references to it here, which I'm sorry for, because I realise with my posting speed no one probably remembers that other letter :') 
> 
> Anyway, this is it, we're done with part 2. I'll try to post the first chapter of part 3 a week from now **at the latest**. Part 3 will be significantly shorter, with only 9 chapters (which might stretch to 10 but no more than that). Part 3 is also where the romance really starts, which doesn't mean it actually starts, only.......... well if someone clueless was reading this and couldn't see the omc/omc tag and thought this was a story about a weirdly intense friendship, part 3 is where they'd probably have a lightbulb moment of a sort. 
> 
> Finally, thank you all so much for reading this whole mess of a story and being awesome!!! I adore you all <333

_~~Hello~~ _

_~~Dear~~ _

_~~Dearest~~ _

_~~Good evening, unless it’s not evening for you, in which case~~ _

_The reason I think that the Cambridge Dictionary (and every other dictionary, really, because the Oxford one doesn’t explain it much better) defines love wrong is that it’s a poor attempt at finding a common denominator for a range of feelings that – I’m starting to think – don’t really have it, and so the end result is pretty lukewarm. Lukewarm, when love itself is warm, or hot, or scorching, or cold, or even, well, lukewarm._

_The reason I think that the Cambridge Dictionary is wrong when it comes to love is that it has failed me. The other day, K tried describing the colour blue to L. He said it was ‘salt’ and ‘ocean’ and ‘storm’ and ‘this small flower, whatsitsname.’ It wasn’t a successful experiment – after all, L has never seen the ocean. I think when people talk to each other about love, it’s a little like this, and maybe that’s why so few ever bother._

_I guess I used to think language was something big, and it might be, no, it IS, but I still failed to communicate to you that I never meant for all this to happen. I had all those words at my disposal, and I kept them tucked under my tongue instead of giving them to you – you, the hoarder of things, who, I knew, would keep them forever._

_(Maybe that’s why I held on to them, scared of that ‘forever,’ because oh, I wonder what the Cambridge Dictionary has to say about that?)_

_I’m no longer a friend of words, is what I’m trying to say. I don’t build myself imaginary houses out of them, and I don’t whisper them to myself like spells. They’re like strangers I might nod at in the street – the respect is there, but the familiarity is gone._

_Are we ever going to make up, me and language? Am I ever not going to be wary of it? Well, I don’t know. I mean, will we ever talk again, me and you? Will I get it right?_

_I’m still collecting words, letter by letter like a drawn-out and half-hearted Scrabble game, but here’s the thing: when the time comes, I won’t keep all I’m planning to say to you unsaid. When the time comes, I’ll say it how it is, and it won’t be planned at all._

_Because IF the time comes? Well, IF it comes, I’ll do whatever it takes to language to make sure other times will come after that, and I won’t be polite about it, either._

_(I can hear them downstairs just now, you know. They laugh so loud— it’s like they think they’ll laugh it away, how you’re not here.)_

_(I don’t know what to tell you. People laugh after car crashes. People laugh after you. Things are not the same.)_

_(I’m glad L never asked me about blue, because I’d explain it with your name, and that, I know, L would understand all too well.)_

_Listen, it’s been forever, and sometimes I hate you, but when I don’t? When I don’t, it’s the other thing._

_(When I do, it’s also the other thing.)_

_Wherever you are, I still (always) hope you’re okay._

_P. S. A riddle just for you: what can’t be repaired once broken?_

_P. P. S. I know, it’s a lousy one. You could list things that can’t be repaired forever (‘forever’ as defined by the Cambridge Dictionary, and then some) but, of course, I mean a promise._

_P. P. P. S. (I mean a promise because I’m still not sure about hearts.)_


End file.
